Day: November 17, 2011

Some Like It Hot: The Influence and Implications of Climate Change on Coffee Berry Borer (Hypothenemus hampei) and Coffee Production in East Africa

/ Matt Artz

PLoS ONEPLoS ONE 6(9), Published 14 September 2011

Juliana Jaramillo, Eric Muchugu, Fernando E. Vega, Aaron Davi, Christian Borgemeister, and Adenirin Chabi-Olaye

“The negative effects of climate change are already evident for many of the 25 million coffee farmers across the tropics and the 90 billion dollar (US) coffee industry. The coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei), the most important pest of coffee worldwide, has already benefited from the temperature rise in East Africa: increased damage to coffee crops and expansion in its distribution range have been reported. In order to anticipate threats and prioritize management actions for H. hampei we present here, maps on future distributions of H. hampei in coffee producing areas of East Africa. Using the CLIMEX model we relate present-day insect distributions to current climate and then project the fitted climatic envelopes under future scenarios A2A and B2B (for HADCM3 model).

Distribution of the coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) illustrating species range shifts in Eastern Africa under climate change scenario A2A*.

Distribution of the coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) illustrating species range shifts in Eastern Africa under climate change scenario A2A*.

“In both scenarios, the situation with H. hampei is forecasted to worsen in the current Coffea arabica producing areas of Ethiopia, the Ugandan part of the Lake Victoria and Mt. Elgon regions, Mt. Kenya and the Kenyan side of Mt. Elgon, and most of Rwanda and Burundi. The calculated hypothetical number of generations per year of H. hampei is predicted to increase in all C. arabica-producing areas from five to ten. These outcomes will have serious implications for C. arabica production and livelihoods in East Africa. We suggest that the best way to adapt to a rise of temperatures in coffee plantations could be via the introduction of shade trees in sun grown plantations. The aims of this study are to fill knowledge gaps existing in the coffee industry, and to draft an outline for the development of an adaptation strategy package for climate change on coffee production. An abstract in Spanish is provided here.”

Why Does It Always Rain on Me? A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Precipitation in Austria

/ Matt Artz

University of InnsbruckFaculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck, Working Papers series, November 2011

Nikolaus Umlauf, Georg Mayr, Jakob Messner, and Achim Zeileis

“It is popular belief that the weather is “bad” more frequently on weekends than on other days of the week and this is often perceived to be associated with an increased chance of rain. In fact, the meteorological literature does report some evidence for such human-induced weekly cycles although these findings are not undisputed. To contribute to this discussion, a modern data-driven approach using structured additive regression models is applied to a newly available high-quality data set for Austria.

Spatial e ect ^ fkr(longi; lati). The range of the color scale is 1.0 on the scale of the linear predictor.

Spatial e ect ^ fkr(longi; lati). The range of the color scale is 1.0 on the scale of the linear predictor.

“The analysis investigates how an ordered response of rain intensities is influenced by a (potential) weekend effect while adjusting for spatio-temporal structure using spatially varying effects of overall level and seasonality patterns. The underlying data are taken from the HOMSTART project which provides daily precipitation quantities over a period of more than 60 years and a dense net of more than 50 meteorological stations all across Austria.”