Conference Agenda

Land conversion from noncropland to cropland has major implications for food production, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and water quality. Once land is converted, restoring its original environmental functions can be costly and time-consuming. Using over 8 million field-level observations, this study examines the impact of climate change on noncropland-to-cropland transitions in North and South Dakota, United States. We estimate how changes in growing-season temperature and precipitation normals—measured as 30-year rolling averages—influence the likelihood of such transitions, focusing on corn and soybeans, the region’s two major crops. Because previous studies have relied primarily on data from already cultivated land, little is known about how climate change affects the probability of noncropland being converted to cropland. This study addresses this gap by providing spatially explicit, field-level estimates of climate-induced transition probabilities. We estimate climate–land conversion relationships separately for two distinct regions: one with fertile, flood-prone conditions and the other with infertile, semi-arid conditions. Results show that precipitation discourages conversion in the former but encourages it in the latter. Temperature has a strongly positive effect in the fertile region but little effect in the semi-arid region. Our projections indicate that an additional 18.2 million acres—over 35% of the remaining noncropland—could be converted to cropland by 2081 under the moderate-emissions scenario RCP4.5, relative to 2018, with most of this expansion occurring in fertile areas. These findings highlight the potential for substantial cropland expansion in regions historically less suited to crop production. Regional heterogeneity underscores the need for region-specific adaptation and conservation strategies to balance the economic gains from cropland expansion with the loss of ecosystem services in a changing climate.