Wheat crop models underestimate drought stress in semi-arid and Mediterranean environments

Under climate change and increasingly extreme weather, projections of water demand and drought stress from process-based crop models can inform risk management and adaptation strategies. Previous studies investigating maize crop models demonstrated considerable error in the simulation of water use,...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Webber, Heidi, Cooke, Diane, Wang, C., Asseng, S., Martre, Pierre, Ewert, Frank, Kimball, B., Hoogenboom, Gerrit, Evett, S., Chanzy, A., Garrigues, S., Olioso, A., Copeland , K. S., Steiner , J. L., Cammarano, Davide, Chen, Y., Crepeau, M., Diamantopoulos, E., Ferrise, Roberto, Manceau, L., Gaiser, Tomas, Gao, Y., Gayler, S., Guarin, J. R., Hunt, T., Jégo, G., Padovan, G., Pattey, E., Ripoche, D., Rodríguez Sánchez, Alfredo, Ruiz Ramos, Margarita, Shelia, V., Srivastava, A.K., Supit, Iwan, Tao, Fulu, Thorp, K., Viswanathan, M., Weber, T., White, J.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2025
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Repositorio:RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:ruidera_____::41e67ce027375782154b7206c5f9f3af
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2025.110032
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378429025002977?via%3Dihub
https://hdl.handle.net/10578/48345
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Climate risk
Crop models
Drought stress
Evapotranspiration
Wheat
Descripción
Sumario:Under climate change and increasingly extreme weather, projections of water demand and drought stress from process-based crop models can inform risk management and adaptation strategies. Previous studies investigating maize crop models demonstrated considerable error in the simulation of water use, and no similar evaluation of wheat crop models exists. The aims of this study were to (1) evaluate wheat crop models’ performance in reproducing observed daily evapotranspiration (ET) for Mediterranean and semi-arid environments, and (2) identify factors and processes associated with model error and uncertainty. These were assessed with an ensemble of wheat crop models for two experiments, one conducted in Bushland, Texas, USA (three seasons, deficit and full irrigation) and another in Avignon, France (four rainfed seasons) with winter bread and durum wheat, respectively. Models were calibrated with all observed data for crop growth. The model ensemble median underestimated water use in all environments evaluated, suggesting a systematic bias. The relative error in underestimating daily ET was constant across levels of atmospheric evaporative demand; therefore, the absolute error was greater for days with larger evaporative demand. This implies errors in the soil water balance increase more rapidly under high evaporative demand conditions. Using a potential versus reference crop evapotranspiration approach did not explain relative model performance. However, the sensitivity analysis indicated that simulation of atmospheric evaporative demand terms explained much more uncertainty in seasonal water use than terms related to soil depth or root growth. Errors in simulated leaf area index were associated with errors in daily simulated ET, but the relationship varied with the growth stage. Collectively, the results suggest the need to improve simulation of atmospheric ET demand to avoid underestimating projected impacts of drought or required water resource availability for viable production systems.

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