Imbach Pablo

CATIE - Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center

Harmonizing the supply of climate information with the type of information needed by next-users is crucial for effective weather and climate services (CS). Understanding of information demand could help reshape supply-side based CS that have dominated the field over the last few decades. Most CS have been developed using a ‘loading dock’ model, whe...

We estimate the effects of extreme weather events on internal migration in Guatemala between 1997 and 2002. Using data from rural municipalities, we implement a generalized linear model that deals with fractions as we explain migration between municipalities. We find that, on average, the presence of a drought in a municipality of origin significan...

Increased interannual climate variability affects agricultural livelihoods throughout the world. In many regions, climate services support decision-makers in their adaptation efforts. The range of these services and the number of associated information products have increased dramatically in recent years. However, the relationships between these pr...

The DynACof model was designed to model coffee agroforestry systems and study the trade-offs to e.g. optimize the system facing climate changes. The model simulates net primary productivity (NPP), growth, yield, mortality, energy and water balance of coffee agroforestry systems according to shade tree species and management. Several plot-scale ecos...

The DynACof model was designed to model coffee agroforestry systems and study the trade-offs to e.g. optimize the system facing climate changes. The model simulates net primary productivity (NPP), growth, yield, mortality, energy and water balance of coffee agroforestry systems according to shade tree species and management. Several plot-scale ecos...

Agroforestry systems (AFS) are complex to model mainly due to the high spatial variability induced by the shade trees. Recently, the microclimate and light heterogeneity issue in AFS has been addressed using the 3D ecophysiological process-based model MAESPA (Charbonnier et al., 2013; Vezy et al., 2018). MAESPA surpassed the classical sun/shade dic...

El proyecto “Mecanismos y redes de transferencia de tecnología relacionada con el cambio climático en América Latina y el Caribe” es implementado por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) y financiado por el Fondo para el Medio Ambiente Mundial (FMAM). El Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), a través de su Programa...

La respuesta internacional ante el cambio climático se ha dado a través de dos mecanismos complementarios, principalmente: la adaptación y la mitigación. Se debe disminuir la producción de GEI (mitigación) para reducir sus efectos sobre el sistema climático y, de manera paralela, se deben llevar a cabo medidas de adaptación para enfrentar los impac...

The objective of this work is to assess the downscaling projections of climate change over Central America at 8-km resolution using the Eta Regional Climate Model, driven by the HadGEM2-ES simulations of RCP4.5 emission scenario. The narrow characteristic of continent supports the use of numerical simulations at very high-horizontal resolution. Pri...

The management of hydrological extremes and impacts on society is inadequately understood because of the combination of short-term hydrological records, an equally short-term assessment of societal responses and the complex multi-directional relationships between the two over longer timescales. Rainfall seasonality and inter-annual variability on t...

El propósito de este manual es apoyar y brindar orientaciones a los técnicos de las oficinas de monitoreo forestal de la región, para desarrollar procesos de construcción de los niveles de referencia que permitan evaluar el éxito de sus proyectos o estrategias nacionales de Reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación Forestal, Conservaci...

For the full information on this publication, please look at < http://www.worldagroforestry.org/atlas-central-america >. This atlas provides habitat suitability maps for 54 species that are widely used in Central America for shade in coffee or cocoa agroforestry systems. The 54 species represent 24 fruit species, 24 timber species and 6 species use...

Para acceder a todos los productos de esta publicación vea URL < http://www.worldagroforestry.org/atlas-central-america >. Las prácticas agroforestales como los sistemas silvopastoriles,café y cacao bajo sombra, cercas vivas, barreras rompevientos y barbechos son una de las estrategias clave para el desarrollo de una agricultura adaptada al clima e...

Climate change will cause geographic range shifts for pollinators and major crops, with global implications for food security and rural livelihoods. However, little is known about the potential for coupled impacts of climate change on pollinators and crops. Coffee production exemplifies this issue, because large losses in areas suitable for coffee...

The management of hydrological extremes and impacts on society is inadequately understood because of the combination of short-term hydrological records, an equally short-term assessment of societal responses and the complex multi-directional relationships between the two over longer timescales. Rainfall seasonality and interannual variability on th...

Tropical rainforest plays an important role in the global carbon cycle, accounting for a large part of global net primary productivity and contributing to CO2 sequestration. The objective of this work is to simulate potential changes in the rainforest biome in Central America subject to anthropogenic climate change under two emissions scenarios, RC...

The impacts of climate change exacerbate the myriad challenges faced by smallholder farmers in the Tropics. In many of these same regions, there is a lack of current, consistent, and spatially-explicit data, which severely limits the ability to locate smallholder communities, map their adaptive capacity, and target adaptation measures to these comm...

Climate change is one of the main threats to rural livelihoods in Central America, especially for small and medium-sized farmers. Climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA) integrates biophysical and socioeconomic information to support policy decisions. We present a CCVA of agricultural livelihoods of four countries in Central America, at the...

Climate change and land use conversion are global threats to biodiversity. Protected areas and biological corridors have been historically implemented as biodiversity conservation measures and suggested as tools within planning frameworks to respond to climate change. However, few applications to national protected areas systems considering climate...

Climate impact models are often implemented at horizontal resolutions (“scales”) too coarse to be readily applied in local impact assessments. However, recent advancements in fine-scale modeling are allowing the creation of impact models that can be applied to landscape-scale adaptation planning. Here, we illustrate the use of fine-scale impact mod...

Climate change will have serious repercussions for agriculture, ecosystems, and farmer livelihoods in Central America. Smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable due to their reliance on agriculture and ecosystem services for their livelihoods. There is an urgent need to develop national and local adaptation responses to reduce these impacts,...

This special issue addresses the adaptation challenges facing smallholders, ecosystems and ecosystem services in the region. In this introduction, we review the literature on regional climate and its drivers, climate change projections, impacts on agriculture and ecosystems, and information management for adaptation in the region. Short description...

Cambios de uso de la tierra, como la deforestación y recuperación de cobertura forestal, influyen en la emisión y remoción de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) a la atmósfera, lo cual ha incentivado que países como Nicaragua, estén preparando estrategias de reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación de bosques (REDD+) o de restauración...

Quantifying relationships between plant functional traits and abiotic gradients is valuable for evaluating potential responses of forest communities to climate change. However, the trajectories of change expected to occur in tropical forest functional characteristics as a function of future climate variation are largely unknown. We modeled communit...

Agroforestry practices, such as integrating trees with cocoa, coffee and other crops, silvopastoral systems, wind breaks, live fences, woodlots, fallows, etc., are key to the development of strategies for climate-smart agriculture for Central America and other regions. However, there is a paucity of information about the suitability of various agro...

Droughts in the Dry Corridor of Guatemala are increasingly affecting the production of subsistence crops, rural employment and food security for the most vulnerable populations. Lack of access to adequate and timely information is one of the main bottlenecks impeding the management of these disasters, a situation that many initiatives have sought t...

The forest transition framework describes the temporal changes of forest areas with economic development. A first phase of forest contraction is followed by a second phase of expansion once a turning point is reached. This framework does not differentiate forest types or ecosystem services, and describes forests regardless of their contribution to...

Transformation of ES variables. (PDF)

Details on land-cover changes. (PDF)

Parameters used in ES modeling. (PDF)

Results of the sub-watershed cluster analysis. (PDF)

Linear models of land-cover changes. (PDF)

Many agronomic systems could be at risk considering the shorter-term climate changes but several effects and interactions are still uncertain. Process-based models (PBMs) are generally well suited for predictions under new conditions but their complexity causes high computational demand which limits their application. This is particularly true for...

Este documento muestra el progreso en el diseño de protocolos de información de los indicadores preliminares del Sistema Nacional de Indicadores para la Adaptación al Cambio Climático (SNIACC) de Colombia, un instrumento para la provisión de información confiable para ACC en diferentes regiones y ciudades. El proceso surgió a raíz de una solicitud...

Average air temperature variation in the period 1975-2011 was analyzed across 34 locations from a broad range of Mesoamerican countries with the view to better inform agricultural scientists of what changes to expect up to, and including, the year 2025. Such changes are likely to influence a range of constraints to agricultural and horticultural pr...

Guatemalan weather conditions in 2012 displayed considerable variations from the climatological data, as was the case for the larger Central American picture. A key finding from our research is that in general the minimum daily temperatures were higher than the corresponding climatology while the maximum temperatures were lower. As a result, the da...

This article in the September 2015 issue of National Geographic Magazine looked at how coffee rust impacted the 2012 to 2013 coffee growing season in Central America, and the expected climate change impacts by 2050.

Key points: Agricultural census database covers Amazon basin municipalities from 1950 to 2012Harmonized database groups crops and pastures by cropping system, C3/C4, and main cropsWe explored correlations between groups and the extent of agricultural lands.

Tropical reforestation (TR) has been highlighted as an important intervention for climate change mitigation because of its carbon storage potential. TR can also play other frequently overlooked, but significant, roles in helping society and ecosystems adapt to climate variability and change. For example, reforestation can ameliorate climate-associa...

El aumento de la temperatura media anual y la disminución de la precipitación que se prevén para el año 2030, debido a efectos del cambio climático, tendrán impactos significativos en la agricultura de todo el país. • En consecuencia, es probable que las áreas aptas para los cultivos que sustentan las exportaciones agrícolas y la seguridad alimenta...

El aumento de la temperatura media anual y la disminución de la precipitación que se prevén para el año 2030, debido a efectos del cambio climático, tendrán impactos significativos en la agricultura de todo el país. • En consecuencia, es probable que las áreas aptas para los cultivos que sustentan las exportaciones agrícolas y la seguridad alimenta...

El aumento de la temperatura media anual y la disminución de la precipitación que se prevén para el año 2030 debido a efectos del cambio climático tendrán impactos significativos en la agricultura de todo el país. • En consecuencia, es probable que las áreas aptas para los cultivos que sustentan las exportaciones agrícolas y la seguridad alimentari...

Coffee rust is a leaf disease caused by the fungus, Hemileia vastatrix. Coffee rust epidemics, with intensities higher than previously observed, have affected a number of countries including: Colombia, from 2008 to 2011; Central America and Mexico, in 2012–13; and Peru and Ecuador in 2013. There are many contributing factors to the onset of these e...

The exchanges of carbon, water, and energy between the atmosphere and the Amazon Basin have global implications for current and future climate. Here, the global atmospheric inversion system of the Monitoring of Atmospheric Composition and Climate service (MACC) was used to further study the seasonal and interannual variations of biogenic CO2 fluxes...

Tropical reforestation (TR) has been highlighted as an important intervention for climate change mitigation because of its carbon storage potential. TR can also play other frequently overlooked, but significant, roles in helping society and ecosystems adapt to climate variability and change. For example, reforestation can ameliorate climate-associa...

Tropical reforestation (TR) has been highlighted as an important intervention for climate change mitigation because of its carbon storage potential. TR can also play other frequently overlooked, but significant, roles in helping society and ecosystems adapt to climate variability and change. For example, reforestation can ameliorate climate-associa...

Our investigation focussed on evaluation of meteorological and climate indicators that favoured the high incidence of coffee rust disease in Central America in 2012 using daily temperature and precipitation data available from 81 ANACAFE/ INSIVUMEH weather stations located in Guatemala.

Central America is the tropical region where the biggest changes in climate are expected. The impact of climate change on agricultural livelihoods and food security will depend not only on capacity to produce different crops but also the sensitivity and adaptability of social-agroecological systems. There is no regional study that integrates these...

Ecosystems services have become a key concept in understanding the way humans benefit from ecosystems. In Costa Rica, a pioneer national scheme of payment provides compensation for forest conservation that is assumed to jointly produce services related to biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, water and scenic beauty, but little is known about...

El aumento de la temperatura media anual y la disminución de la precipitación que se prevén para el año 2030, debido a efectos del cambio climático, tendrán impactos significativos en la agricultura de todo el país. • En consecuencia, es probable que las áreas aptas para los cultivos que sustentan las exportaciones agrícolas y la seguridad alimenta...

Los aumentos de la temperatura media anual y disminución de la precipitación que se prevén para el año 2030 debido a efectos del cambio climático tendrán impactos significativos en la agricultura de todo el país. • En consecuencia, es probable que las áreas aptas para los cultivos que sustentan las exportaciones agrícolas y la seguridad alimentaria...

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) considerations T he climate-smart agriculture (CSA) concept reflects an ambition to improve the integration of agriculture development and climate responsiveness. It aims to achieve food security and broader development goals under a changing climate and increasing food demand. CSA initiatives sustainably increase pr...

CHAPTER 6 Highlights Addressing the challenges of climate change requires integrated, systemic, interdisciplinary and collective responses and achieving results at different geographical and temporal scales, adjusted to the needs for restoration of ecosystems and their services vital for human wellbeing The Climate Smart Territories (CST) approach...

Efficient irrigation and drainage systems are essential responses to increasingly irregular rainfall patterns over large parts of the country. The provision of improved weather information services will facilitate informed decision making by producers. A growing public concern is the high rates of agrochemical usage by Costa Rican farmers. Efficien...

Systems for water capture, storage, and conservation, as well as efficient irrigation systems, are essential responses to the increased frequency and intensity of drought and increasingly irregular rainfall patterns throughout the country. El Salvador is developing a state-of-the-art climate information service, providing opportunities to develop k...