Modeling the current land suitability and future dynamics of global soybean cultivation under climate change scenarios

With high economic and nutritional value, soybean is an important crop with increasing global demand. In order to explore the current global potential cultivation areas of soybean and its future dynamics (in 2030s, 2050s and 2070s) in response to future climate changes, a MaxEnt model was established. Based on fraction values of soybean-harvested area (FSHA) as the currently known soybean distribution, and climate and soil conditions as the predictors, predictions with a resolution of 5 arcmin (approx. 10 x 10 km) were made by our model. The modeling results indicated that most of the current global soybean distributed in areas with medium to high land suitability for soybean cultivation, and there were still potential undeveloped suitable areas around the world. Under future climate change scenarios (RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) of multiple global circulation models (IPSL-CM5A-LR, BCC-CSM 1.1 and MIROC-ESM-CHEM), significant increase in suitability was expected to occur in broad areas of the middle and high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Areas of central and eastern Europe, southern Russia and southeastern Canada were expected to get a medium suitability in the long term. Both the area with increasing and decreasing land suitability were predicted to increase with time, but the latter was greater and RCP 8.5 gave the worst prediction. Large areas of low latitudes were expected to become unsuitable under future climate change scenarios. Our study indicated that the risk of global soybean cultivation may be higher in the future.