The WaterBlog

Building a Tool for Microclimate Management

By Femke van Woesik June 21, 2021 Climate change threats and fragile ecosystems are threatening agricultural production and resulting in lower agricultural capacity. This highlights the importance of building climate resilience and improving conditions for better agricultural yield. Increasing climate resilience at a farm level can be done by microclimate management. As was highlighted in an earlier piece, the management of microclimates is a powerful but not well understood frontier in smoothening out the impact of climate change and creating more resilient agricultural ecosystems. This blog will pick up the baton and explore how microclimate management can be made practical in the form of an assessment tool. Microclimates are the local interplays between several factors: solar radiation, soil moisture, soil temperature, air temperature, air humidity, and wind direction and speed. These microclimatic interplays occur on a small scale with a horizontal range between centimetres and a hundred meters and a vertical range between centimetres and ten meters from the ground;… Continued