Potential Land Use Scenarios for Climate Change Adaptation in Jordan

LOCATION: Jordan

PRINCIPAL PARTNER: National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC)

Jordan’s national agricultural development strategy emphasises managing and conserving the natural resource base while sustaining and enhancing the productivity of agricultural lands. In this context, a team from the National Agricultural Research Center’s (NARC) Geographic Information System and Remote Sensing (GIS & RS) Department and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) conducted a study to identify and map potential land suitability in Jordan for ten land-use types under current and future precipitation patterns and climatic conditions. As a result, NARC and ICARDA launched the Climate Change and Drought Atlas for Jordan, containing maps which track land suitability for agriculture, annual precipitation, changes to weather conditions, and the length of growing periods (LGP) under rain-fed conditions.

The Atlas provides information on the expected threats to increase climate change adaptation measures as part of Jordan’s new climate change strategy, which aims to mitigate the negative impact of climate change on the rural poor. It focuses on the complex relationships between soils, land-use options, and climate change and how these changing relationships will likely affect the land’s suitability for agriculture in the future. Several hundred maps included in this Atlas will benefit land managers, decision-makers, and farmers by guiding sustainable agricultural land use according to its potential physical suitability, climatic and soil conditions, and land use.