Balancing Productivity and Climate Impact: Climate-Smart Potential of Irrigation Practices

Traditional agricultural practices have placed unsustainable pressures on soils, resulting in degraded soil health and losses in biodiversity and fertility. Modern agriculture faces the dual challenge of increasing productivity while building resilience to climate change, particularly in water-scarce regions where crop productivity is at risk. Recognizing the potential of agricultural soils as a nature-based climate solution, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) offers a transformative strategy by integrating conservation practices and efficient water management to enhance soil health and mitigate climate impacts. From an irrigation perspective, this necessitates a comprehensive framework to holistically evaluate practices, moving beyond traditional objectives of maximizing yield and water use efficiency. In this study, we develop a multi-objective optimization framework for climate-smart irrigation (CSI), whereby a dual-index system evaluates irrigation systems (e.g., drip, sprinkler) and strategies (e.g., stress-avoidance, deficit irrigation) across productivity and climate impact dimensions. We first demonstrate the application of this framework by analyzing field studies of different crops (such as wheat and rice), irrigation practices and soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emission compositions, showing how the new indices jointly identify optimal irrigation practices. Additionally, using an ensemble of crop model simulations for corn production using irrigation across major U.S. production regions under varying climate and soil conditions, we explore trade-offs between productivity and climate impact goals. Results reveal a spectrum of Pareto-optimal irrigation practices that balance these dual objectives. These insights underscore the importance of holistic approaches in CSI and are critical for providing actionable insights into nature-based climate solutions in agricultural ecosystems.