SESYNC Cyberinfrastructure Course - Climate Drivers Team
Team Members:
- Sarah Wiener
- Rachel Schattman
- John Cobb
- Sarah Champion
Research Questions: How do reported crop losses, specifically from drought, extreme precipitation, high heat, and frost or freeze, relate to concerns of USDA field staff over those climate or weather stressors? How do observed extreme events, specifically drought, extreme precipitation, high heat, and frost or freeze, relate to concern of USDA field staff over those same climate or weather stressors?
Course Abstract: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) places thousands of field staff in county offices across the country to provide conservation technical assistance, low cost farm loans, and disaster recovery assistance to farmers and foresters through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA). As climate change brings increasingly variable and extreme weather to farms, these field staff are poised to provide technical support to farmers who may be unsure of how to prepare for and respond to climate and weather threats. The USDA Climate Hubs were formed, in part, to provide management relevant scientific information to USDA field staff and others. However, significant variation exists among USDA field staff regarding perceptions of climate change and both general and specific risks (Wiener et al. 2018). Furthermore, in order to effectively prepare USDA field staff to provide assistance to American farmers impacted by climate change and extreme weather, we must understand how past events influence risk perception. These factors can inform how organizations such as the USDA Climate Hubs communicate with these key partners, provide trainings, and create professional development opportunities.
In this course, we will explore how reported crop losses and historical climate and weather events within a respondent’s state influence perceptions of climate and weather risk. Specifically, we will examine relationships with both observed occurrences of extreme events and of crop losses due to drought, extreme precipitation, high heat, and frost or freeze. Through this project, we will apply historical climate data, crop loss indemnity figures, and findings our team collected from a nation-wide survey of USDA field staff to the contemporary debate regarding the influence that personal experience has on individuals’ perceptions of risk.
Data Sources: Data from two surveys targeted towards USDA FSA and NRCS field staff administered by our team between November 2016-March 2017. The FSA survey had 4,621 responses (43% response rate) and the NRCS survey had 1,893 responses (22% response rate). Four years of crop loss data at the state and county level from the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) and FSA (2013-2016). The two datasets together paint an accurate picture of acres lost and cost of loss, including data on cause of loss, and crop type. Potential for acquiring additional historical indemnity and loss data exists, pending approval from FSA. RMA data is publicly available dating back to the 1940s. State level data compiled from USDA, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and US Forest Service (USFS) detailing total number of acres in production for agriculture and livestock, including leased rangeland through BLM and the US Forest Service and crop-level data through USDA. These data are used to normalize the crop loss data at a state level. Monthly gridded climate data at state and climate division level for temperature (min/max), precipitation, and drought (Palmer Drought Severity Index). These data go back to 1895, though we will focus on the last 30 years.
If the repository does not contain a data folder, download a zipped data file to accompany the worksheets. A "good" data-synthesis pipeline stores the data separate from the code—we may take a shortcut for these lessons.