Browsing by Subject "adaptation"
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(2024)Climate change is challenging farmers around the world, undermining food security and livelihoods. Smallholder farmers are encountering changing environmental conditions and extreme weather events as a significant negative impact on their livelihoods and food security when the resources needed to adapt are not sufficiently available. Previous studies show that the impacts of climate change are currently most noticeable in the developing countries of the Global South, where local agriculture and smallholder farming still remain an important part of people's livelihoods and local food security. This study focused on the experiences and outcomes of the Building Resilience -tool I (BR-I) for smallholder farmers in 5 different African countries between 2021 and 2022. Through the tool, farmers assessed the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods and their own capacities and needs to adapt to the challenges caused by climate change. The data used in this study consisted of reports filled in when using the tool collecting farmers' responses, and separate feedback on their experiences of using the tool. The results showed that climate change reduced the predictability of environmental conditions and increased the irregularity of the growing seasons. Drought, floods, and storms were the main threats to crops, often leading to yield losses or poor crop quality. Other losses included livelihood-related losses of material assets, for example during floods and storms. Indirect negative impacts of climate change included loss of farmers' livelihoods, increased poverty and reduced local food security and weaker nutritional quality of food. To adapt to climate change impacts, farmers often used more sustainable and higher quality crop varieties and, for example, built more efficient irrigation systems. However, the results showed that to adapt to climate change, farmers need more material and financial resources and research-based knowledge to improve their livelihood activities.
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(2016)Earlier research has shown that it is important in climate change adaptation to take into account the indirect impacts of climate change. These are impacts resulting from climate change that have their initial direct effects outside Finland but reflect to Finland through for example international markets. For example, climate change could affect Finland indirectly through changing prices in global food markets. In this thesis I study the impacts of increasing hydropower potential in the Nordic electricity markets because of climate change. Nordic aspect is important as most of the hydropower in the Nordic power markets is produced outside Finland. Climate science has shown that climate change can affect the precipitation and hydropower potential in the Nordic countries. Majority of studies give reason to believe that the hydropower potential will increase and change so that the potential increases more in winter and spring months. However, a lot of uncertainty is related to the results, which is crucial to bear in mind. According to a Nordic research report it is nevertheless very plausible that climate change will affect the hydrology and hydropower potential in Nordic countries from place to place. Hydropower is an important technology in the Nordic electricity markets as depending on the year about half of the power is produced by it. As hydropower’s producing costs are low the annual precipitation affects the electricity price levels so that in a wet year the prices decrease and vice versa. Hydropower has also its role in balancing the production and consumption of power as its production is comparably easy to adjust. I use a simulation model of the Nordic electricity markets by Maria Kopsakangas-Savolainen and Rauli Svento in this thesis. In my analysis I increase the hydropower production (+10%) and study how it affects i.a. the price level and capacities of different power production technologies. This sensitivity analysis is made in various scenarios resulting from different climate and energy policies. In the thesis’ simplified setting increasing the amount of hydropower decreased significantly the price of electricity and thus profits of electricity producers and decreased the amount of thermal power production. Thermal and nuclear production are important technologies for Finland and thus the results are interesting from the Finnish point of view. The results are in-line with a previous Norwegian study. Another potentially significant impact of climate change might the decreasing electricity consumption due to warmer winters but is out of the scope of this thesis.
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(2024)Many noble hardwood species of boreal and temperate climate zones will experience increased selection pressure for adaptive traits as climate change proceeds. This will cause shifts in the timing of phenological events such as budburst in spring. Shifts in phenology may disrupt interaction between species and their environment as well as interaction within and between species. Changes in the timing of annual life cycle traits may threaten species’ current fitness and potential to adapt to future climates. The rate and magnitude of phenological shifts will increase along with increasing temperatures. To adapt to changing environmental conditions, species need to possess adaptive variation in life cycle traits. In small and isolated populations at northern margins of species distribution, variation in adaptive traits is threatened by low genetic variation, low gene flow and genetic drift. To preserve the adaptive potential of noble hardwood populations in Finland, ex situ gene conservation collections are established where genetic resources are conserved as living trees. To characterize the adaptive potential currently present in Finnish gene conservation collections of European maple (A. platanoides L.), small-leaved linden (T. cordata Mill.) and European white elm (U. laevis Pall.), the amount of current phenological diversity should be evaluated. For this purpose, budburst progress in the collections was tracked by phenotypic observations on budburst phenological phases in relation to accumulating temperature. The data did not allow for analysis of variance between origin populations; therefore, a more conservative approach was chosen where conserved genetic resources were assessed by examining budburst differentiation between groups of origin populations. The level of differentiation in budburst temperatures is used as an indicator of spring phenological diversity to determine if the conserved origins are adapted to the same spring temperature range. No significant differentiation was found in the timing of budburst between groups of origins. Therefore, the conserved origins are presumed to be adapted to the same spring temperature range within their respective species distribution in Finland. However, low phenological diversity may magnify the threats imposed to these species by climate change. Genetic studies are recommended for deeper understanding of underlying genetic diversity and adaptive potential of the stored genetic resources.
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