I helped write a textbook!

The textbook is designed specifically for Kansas State's Biology 198 Principles of Biology course. The course is taught using the studio approach and based on active learning. Typical enrollment approaches 1,500 students a year. The textbook is divided into 7 learning modules and unusually begins with the big picture of ecology and then steps back to cell biology, biochemistry, genetics, and energetics before ending with whole-organism plant and animal modules.

Study Finds Climate Change May Dramatically Reduce Wheat Production

Recent research at Kansas State University finds that in the coming decades at least 25% of the world's wheat production will be lost to extreme weather from climate change, if no adaptive measures are taken. Based on the 2012-2013 global wheat harvest of 701 million tons, the resulting temperature increase could result in 42 million tons less produced wheat. Crop ecophysiologists currently project a 6% decline in wheat production for each degree Celsius the temperature rises.

How will crops fare under climate change? Depends on how you ask.

The damage scientists expect climate change to do to crop yields can differ greatly depending on which model was used to make projections. While the most dire scenarios always loom large in the minds of the public and policymakers, most are usually not aware of how the modeling influences the outcome.

The report in the journal Global Change Biology is one of the first to compare agricultural projections generated by empirical models to those by mechanistic models. Building on similar studies from ecology, the researchers found yet more evidence that empirical models may show greater losses as a result of climate change, while mechanistic models may be overly optimistic.