[H-CG23] Adaptation to climate change and its social implementation

[HCG23-08] Impact of Climate Change on agriculture and forestry in Toyama Prefecture and its adaptation measures

*Takafumi Yoshida¹, Yuhwan Seo¹, Jing Zhang² (1.Northwest Pacific Region Environmental Cooperation Center, 2.Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Toyama University)

Keywords:Climate change, Rice production, Natural forest, Meso-mountainous area

In Toyama Prefecture, 80 % of the area is agricultural land and forest. Therefore, change of precipitation and rise of temperature may have big impacts on agricultural crops and forest vegetation. Since 95 % of the agricultural land is paddy field and the main crop is rice, negative impact of high temperature is already shown as white immature grains. Countermeasures, such as postponing the rice planting season are taken; however, it is concerned that higher temperature in the future would cause more serious damages. In case of forest, 60 % of the area is natural forest, and 45% of which is dominated by Japanese beech (Fagus crenata). Toyama prefectural government introduced a taxation scheme called ‘Mizu to Midori no Morizukuri Zei’ in 2007 by which, various actions to conserve and manage forest areas have been carried out. Yet, Japanese beech is easier to be destructed by high temperature, and it is projected that the tree will be ruined all over Japan along with climate change. Thus, to reduce impacts on agriculture and forestry, it is required to implement adaptation measures based on the forecasted future climate condition.
We analyzed the impact of climate change on rice production and forest vegetation in Toyama prefecture by using the climate forecast, “NIES2020 (Ver,1)”, bias corrected climate scenarios over Japan based on CDFDM method using CMIP6, provided by the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan.
The result shows that the probability of white immature grains has been already increased in any climate change scenario, and all paddy fields will not be suitable to grow “Koshihikari”, the current major type of rice in Toyama in 2080 in the scenario of SSP5-8.5. Deterioration of Japanese beech forest will also be advanced, and especially in meso-mountainous areas, the risk is higher. Then, adaptation measures using meso-mountainous areas are recognized as one of the useful methods.
This research was implemented by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20212001) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency provided by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan.