Climate change predictions for the Pacific Northwest
region of the United States of America include increasing temperatures,
intensification of winter precipitation, and a shift from mixed snow/rain to
rain-dominant events, all of which may increase the risk of soil erosion and
threaten agricultural and ecological productivity. Here we used the
agricultural/environmental model SWAT with climate predictions from the Coupled
Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) “high CO2 emissions”
scenario (RCP8.5) to study the impact of altered temperature and precipitation
patterns on soil erosion and crop productivity in the Willamette River Basin of
western Oregon. An ensemble of 10 climate models representing the full range in
temperature and precipitation predictions of CIMP5 produced substantial
increases in sediment yield, with differences between yearly averages for the
final (2090-2099) and first (2010-2019) decades ranging from 3.9 to 15.2 MT·ha-1 among models. Sediment yield in the
worst case model (CanESM2) corresponded to loss of 1.5 - 2.7 mm·soil·y-1, equivalent to potentially stripping productive topsoil
from the landscape in under two centuries. Most climate models predicted only
small increases in precipitation (an average of 5.8% by the end of the 21st
century) combined with large increases in temperature (an average of 0.05°C·
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