Adnan Akyüz, assistant professor of climatology and state climatologist, and Ambika Badh, a doctoral candidate of natural resource management and Earth and climate sciences, have written an article that will appear in the International Journal of Climate Change-Impacts and Responses. The article is titled “Impact of Climate Change on Growing Seasons in Select Cities of North Dakota, USA.”

Barbara Mullins, from the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network Center, and Gary Vocke from the U.S. Department of Agriculture also were co-authors of the article.

The researches learned that North Dakota growing seasons in Jamestown, Williston, Minot and Pembina lengthened by 1.2 days per decade on average. “Farmers in the traditional wheat-growing areas of the Northern Plains are growing fewer acres of wheat,” Akyüz said. “The shift to row crops, including corn, in recent years has been dramatic. Yields of some competing crops have been rising faster than wheat. However, there also is evidence that a lengthening of the growing season as climate change occurs may have a role in the crop rotation choices that farmers are making.”

Akyüz is Badh’s faculty adviser. Badh’s ultimate goal is to investigate how climate change affects regional net returns for different crops and what this means for rotational cropping choices.