dohboi wrote:Beyond [a] reasonable drought: New Zealand's climate future
I am preparing for heat and drought even though here in the Mo Ozarks we are seeing a cooler and wetter period. The forecast I have read about climate change and the Ozarks call for more moisture because heat means more water in the atmosphere. I suspect as heat continues to build this will shift to hot and dry periods too so maybe we have a cool wet winters and hot and dry summers thing IOW extremes. It has been unusually wet now for several years around here. Uncomfortably so in the winter with long periods of grey, wet, and cool. I hardly gathered any solar this winter. It was a horrible winter for solar.
I have a rotational grazing permaculture system that embraces a polyculture of grass, weeds, and brush with a multi species of cows and goats. The industrial agriculture of the large cow calf operations around here could be in a world of hurt with extremes. The monocultures of these operations with cool season grasses is dangerous if droughts become a regular yearly thing in the summer. I feel a polyculture especially mixed with drought tolerant native grasses is the key. I participated in a program to introduce warm season grasses that has succeeded on several fields. So, this is part of the reason I added goats to my grazing mix and embraced weeds and brush. There is more money in cattle but goats allow for a polyculture that better manages diversity of a pasture with less chemicals and machine use. Goats need less water too and that could be an issue even around here in the future. We are blessed with great water here in the Ozarks but that could change in severe drought situations.