IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v178y2025i4d10.1007_s10584-025-03905-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climate-induced changes in agricultural land use: parcel-level evidence from California’s Central Valley

Author

Listed:
  • Siddharth Kishore

    (UC Riverside)

  • Mehdi Nemati

    (UC Riverside)

  • Ariel Dinar

    (UC Riverside)

  • Cory L. Struthers

    (University of Washington)

  • Scott MacKenzie

    (University of California)

  • Matthew S. Shugart

    (University of California)

Abstract

How growers adjust land-use decisions to a changing climate has important consequences for food supplies and environmental impact. In this paper, we examine changes in agricultural land use as an adaptive response to long-term climate impacts, using unique parcel-level data in Central Valley, California – a major agricultural hub worldwide. We combine parcel-specific acreage decisions and climate normal to assess the climate-induced land use transition. We find that growers in the Central Valley are transitioning from annual crops to perennial crops in response to changing climates. Summer degree days and total precipitation increased the share of perennial crops, and projected declines in winter chill hours are also expected to increase the share of perennial crops in the Central Valley. Analysis of land-use with heterogeneous land quality suggests that the share of perennial crops increased 11% in high-quality lands and 7% in low quality lands.

Suggested Citation

  • Siddharth Kishore & Mehdi Nemati & Ariel Dinar & Cory L. Struthers & Scott MacKenzie & Matthew S. Shugart, 2025. "Climate-induced changes in agricultural land use: parcel-level evidence from California’s Central Valley," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 178(4), pages 1-18, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:178:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s10584-025-03905-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-025-03905-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-025-03905-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-025-03905-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anna Boser & Kelly Caylor & Ashley Larsen & Madeleine Pascolini-Campbell & John T. Reager & Tamma Carleton, 2024. "Field-scale crop water consumption estimates reveal potential water savings in California agriculture," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Ruben N. Lubowski & Andrew J. Plantinga & Robert N. Stavins, 2008. "What Drives Land-Use Change in the United States? A National Analysis of Landowner Decisions," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(4), pages 529-550.
    3. Xiaomeng Cui, 2020. "Beyond Yield Response: Weather Shocks and Crop Abandonment," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 7(5), pages 901-932.
    4. Steven M. Ramsey & Jason S. Bergtold & Jessica L. Heier Stamm, 2021. "Field‐Level Land‐Use Adaptation to Local Weather Trends," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(4), pages 1314-1341, August.
    5. Hyunok Lee & Daniel Sumner, 2015. "Economics of downscaled climate-induced changes in cropland, with projections to 2050: evidence from Yolo County California," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 132(4), pages 723-737, October.
    6. Xinde Ji & Kelly M. Cobourn, 2021. "Weather Fluctuations, Expectation Formation, and Short-Run Behavioral Responses to Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 78(1), pages 77-119, January.
    7. Jianhong E. Mu & Benjamin M. Sleeter & John T. Abatzoglou & John M. Antle, 2017. "Climate impacts on agricultural land use in the USA: the role of socio-economic scenarios," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(2), pages 329-345, September.
    8. Boser, Anna & Caylor, Kelly & Larsen, Ashley & Pascolini-Campbell, Madeleine & Reager, John T & Carleton, Tamma, 2024. "Field-scale crop water consumption estimates reveal potential water savings in California agriculture," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt81j397nv, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    9. Stefan Wimmer & Christian Stetter & Jonas Schmitt & Robert Finger, 2024. "Farm‐level responses to weather trends: A structural model," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 106(3), pages 1241-1273, May.
    10. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 2019. "Correlated random effects models with unbalanced panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 211(1), pages 137-150.
    11. David Lobell & Angela Torney & Christopher Field, 2011. "Climate extremes in California agriculture," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 355-363, December.
    12. Olivier Deschenes & Charles Kolstad, 2011. "Economic impacts of climate change on California agriculture," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 365-386, December.
    13. David Lobell & Christopher Field, 2011. "California perennial crops in a changing climate," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 317-333, December.
    14. Juhwan Lee & Steven Gryze & Johan Six, 2011. "Effect of climate change on field crop production in California’s Central Valley," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 109(1), pages 335-353, December.
    15. Riju Joshi & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2019. "Correlated Random Effects Models with Endogenous Explanatory Variables and Unbalanced Panels," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 134, pages 243-268.
    16. Gaurav Arora & Hongli Feng & Christopher J. Anderson & David A. Hennessy, 2020. "Evidence of climate change impacts on crop comparative advantage and land use," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(2), pages 221-236, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Amber Kerr & Jake Dialesandro & Kerri Steenwerth & Nathan Lopez-Brody & Emile Elias, 2018. "Vulnerability of California specialty crops to projected mid-century temperature changes," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 419-436, June.
    2. Jisang Yu & Gyuhyeong Goh, 2022. "Estimating temperature impacts on perennial crop losses in California: Insights from insurance data," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(3), pages 1409-1423, September.
    3. Guido Franco & Daniel Cayan & Susanne Moser & Michael Hanemann & Myoung-Ae Jones, 2012. "Erratum to: Second California Assessment: integrated climate change impacts assessment of natural and managed systems. Guest editorial," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 113(3), pages 1099-1100, August.
    4. Mu, Jianhong E. & McCarl, Bruce A. & Sleeter, Benjamin & Abatzoglou, John T. & Zhang, Hongliang, 2018. "Adaptation with climate uncertainty: An examination of agricultural land use in the United States," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 392-401.
    5. Arisha Ashraf & Ariel Dinar & Érika Monteiro & Todd Gaston, 2016. "Adaptation In California Agriculture: What Have We Been Assessing For Two And A Half Decades?," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(02), pages 1-19, May.
    6. Kim, Seung Min & Mendelsohn, Robert, 2025. "Climate change and fractional outcomes: A long-run panel study of U.S. crop failure rates and pasture rates," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    7. Maria C. Lo Bue, 2024. "Drivers of changes in child nutritional conditions: A panel data‐based study on Indonesian households, 1997–2014," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 741-776, May.
    8. Arnd Kölling & Claus Schnabel, 2022. "Owners, external managers and industrial relations in German establishments," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 60(2), pages 424-443, June.
    9. Bellia, Mario & Calès, Ludovic, 2025. "Bank profitability and central bank digital currency," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    10. Victor Chernozhukov & Whitney K. Newey & Victor Quintas-Martinez & Vasilis Syrgkanis, 2021. "Automatic Debiased Machine Learning via Riesz Regression," Papers 2104.14737, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    11. repec:ags:aaea22:335970 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Dilmaghani, Maryam, 2021. "The gender gap in competitive chess across countries: Commanding queens in command economies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 425-441.
    13. Odolinski, Kristofer & Smith, Andrew & Wheat, Phill & Nilsson, Jan-Eric & Dheilly, Clement, 2023. "Damage or no damage from traffic: Re-examining marginal cost pricing for rail signalling maintenance," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 13-21.
    14. Fattouh, Bassam & Pisicoli, Beniamino & Scaramozzino, Pasquale, 2024. "Debt and financial fragility: Italian non-financial companies after the pandemic," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    15. Juergensen, Jill Josefina & Love, James H. & Surdu, Irina & Narula, Rajneesh, 2024. "Learning-by-exporting: The strategic role of organizational innovation," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(6).
    16. Ron Berman & Ayelet Israeli, 2022. "The Value of Descriptive Analytics: Evidence from Online Retailers," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(6), pages 1074-1096, November.
    17. Bo E. Honoré & Luojia Hu & Ekaterini Kyriazidou & Martin Weidner, 2024. "Simultaneity in binary outcome models with an application to employment for couples," Advanced Studies in Theoretical and Applied Econometrics, in: Subal C. Kumbhakar & Robin C. Sickles & Hung-Jen Wang (ed.), Advances in Applied Econometrics, pages 741-777, Springer.
    18. Cai, Qingyin & Çakır, Metin & Beatty, Timothy & Park, Timothy A., 2022. "Drought and the Specialty Crops Production in California," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322530, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    19. Ibirénoyé Romaric Sodjahin & Fabienne Femenia & Obafemi Philippe Koutchade & A. Carpentier, 2022. "On the economic value of the agronomic effects of crop diversification for farmers: estimation based on farm cost accounting data [Valeur économique des effets agronomiques de la diversification de," Working Papers hal-03639951, HAL.
    20. Becker, Annette & Hottenrott, Hanna & Mukherjee, Anwesha, 2022. "Division of labor in R&D? Firm size and specialization in corporate research," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 1-23.
    21. Schäfer, Dorothea & Stephan, Andreas & Weser, Henriette, 2023. "Crisis stress for the diversity of financial portfolios — evidence from European households," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 330-347.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:178:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s10584-025-03905-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.