NORTH WEST TASMANIA - CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION
Climate change and agriculture in the North-West of Tasmania Authors; Samantha Gadsby and Astrid Ketelaar, AK Consultants, 28 April 2014 Acknowledgements; The authors would like to thank Keith Rice, Tony Clarke, Peter Hardman, Mark Smith, Rachel Brown, Ernst Kemmerer and David Phelan for their contributions. Introduction Agriculture in the Cradle Coast NRM region is a significant contributor to Tasmanian agricultural production, contributing 40 per cent ($459 million) of the total gross value of agricultural production (GVAP) in the state during 2010-11 (Coboche et al 2013). During this same time period the region also supported 31 per cent of Tasmania’s population employed in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector (Coboche et al 2013). Agricultural land use in 2010-2011 was predominately grazing (232,436 hectares) and cropping (25,882 hectares) (Coboche et al 2013). Under a changing climate it is expected that there will be significant impacts across the entire agricultural sector (Holz et al 2010). However, not necessarily for the worst, providing landholders are well-informed of the expected changes and how to adapt their farming practices to suit. Climate driven changes bring challenges for landholders in an already challenging environment, however, Tasmanian farmers are well equipped to deal with change and have been managing their properties through a variable climate for generations. Recent changes in climate have already resulted in diversification by farmers. Drought in particular has motivated land holders explore alternative pursuits (Mooney et al 2010). In considering the future of Tasmanian agriculture under a changing climate, this report will focus on the climate scenarios established by Climate Futures of Tasmania (Grose et al 2010). This extensive project downscaled climate projections and scenarios (10km) based on two emissions scenarios (Grose et al 2010). We refer to the climate change impacts on Tasmanian agriculture based on the high global emissions scenario (A2) for the period 1961-1990 baseline to 2071-2100. The A2 emissions scenario is commonly used for such studies as emissions are currently tracking above this scenario (Grose et al 2010). In understanding climate change impacts on agriculture, adaptation capacity and adaptation strategies; landholders can be confident in managing their farming enterprises into the future. They can have confidence that their planning process is adaptive and capable of responding to the impacts of current and future climate change events and that there is integration between biophysical, socio-economic and climate change factors which seek to improve landscape connectivity, function and resilience.
The Cradle Coast region The Cradle Coast region is located on the North West and West Coast of Tasmania, including King Island. It covers an area of 22 500 square kilometres (Cochen et al 2013) and encompasses the nine LGA areas
This project is supported by Cradle Coast NRM, through funding from the Australian Government