From Leaf to Canopy: Quantifying CO2 and Temperature Effects on Plant Growth at Different Scales.

Climate change predictions include shifts in average temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (CO2), and precipitation patterns and intensities away from their historical mean values.  Changes in these environmental factors will profoundly impact crop production in the majority of agriculturally productive regions throughout the world.  Tools to understand and quantify effects of these factors on our major crop commodities are required in order to assess impact on global future food security, and develop adaptation methods.  Data from controlled environment growth chambers for this purpose is particularly useful because it permits measurement of crop response to one or two factors varied independently from other production inputs.  Experimental results from soil-plant-atmosphere research chambers were obtained on the response of major commodities, including corn and potato, to climate change factors including T, CO2, and interactions between them.  Such data was used to parameterize and evaluate crop models based on coupled leaf-level gas exchange and energy balance routines which are subsequently scaled to the whole canopy.  This presentation will focus on explanation of the data sets, relevant modeling paradigms, and an example model application study for regional-scale food security.