Climate Research

Project Summary

Agriculture in Minnesota generates more than $112 billion in total economic impact and supports more than 430,000 jobs. But agricultural production is intimately tied to weather and climate. We are engaging with farmers and other agricultural stakeholders to better understand their climate concerns and adaptive management needs, with the goal of creating a tool to help navigate decisions around seed selection, cover crops, tillage, infrastructure investments and other practices.

Water in Minnesota is a critical cultural and natural resource, vital to our state’

Project Summary

Architects and engineers typically rely on historical weather data when designing new structures. With our changing climate, historical data can misrepresent the range, frequency, and intensity of current and future weather conditions which our built environment must be able to withstand. Working with the national design firm HGA, MCAP completed a report documenting the gap between climate science and current architectural and engineering standards.

MCAP is part of the Dashboard for Agricultural Water Use and Nutrient Management (DAWN) project, a multi-year, multi-institutional effort to create "a predictive decision support tool to sustain food and energy crop production in the U.S.