Abstract
Context
Global environmental change is expected to dramatically affect agricultural crop production through a myriad of pathways. One important and thus far poorly understood impact is the effect of land cover and climate change on agricultural insect pests and insecticides.
Objectives
Here we address the following three questions: (1) how do landscape complexity and weather influence present-day insecticide use, (2) how will changing landscape characteristics and changing climate influence future insecticide use, and how do these effects manifest for different climate and land cover projections? and (3) what are the most important drivers of changing insecticide use?
Methods
We use panel models applied to county-level agriculture, land cover, and weather data in the US to understand how landscape composition and configuration, weather, and farm characteristics impact present-day insecticide use. We then leverage forecasted changes in land cover and climate under different future scenarios to predict insecticide use in 2050.
Results
We find different future scenarios—through modifications in both landscape and climate conditions—increase the amount of area treated by ~ 4–20% relative to 2017, with regionally heterogeneous impacts. Of note, we report large farms are more influential than large crop patches and increased winter minimum temperature is more influential than increased summer maximum temperature. However, our results suggest the most important determinants of future insecticide use are crop composition and farm size, variables for which future forecasts are sparse.
Conclusions
Both landscape and climate change are expected to increase future insecticide use. Yet, crop composition and farm size are highly influential, data-poor variables. Better understanding of future crop composition and farm economics is necessary to effectively predict and mitigate increases in pesticide use.
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We thank O. Deschenes for sharing data and for methodological insights, and A. MacDonald for insightful comments on an earlier draft.
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Larsen, A.E., McComb, S. Land cover and climate changes drive regionally heterogeneous increases in US insecticide use. Landscape Ecol 36, 159–177 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01130-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01130-5