Editorial: Addressing climate change in agriculture and natural resources with a focus on adaptation and extreme events

Prakash Kumar Jha^1*Prakash Kumar Jha²Sushant Mehan³Saswata Nandi⁴

• ¹University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Oakland, United States
• ²Mississippi State University, Mississippi State University, United States
• ³South Dakota State University, Brookings, United States
• ⁴University of California Merced, Merced, United States

As climate change accelerates, agriculture and natural resources face growing threats, not merely from gradual shifts in temperature and precipitation, but also from more frequent and intense extreme events, variability, and compounded stresses. Addressing these challenges requires more than technical fixes; it requires region-and crop-specific strategies, innovative management practices, and attention to social and institutional dimensions of resilience.The Frontiers Research Topic "Addressing Climate Change in Agriculture and Natural Resources with a Focus on Adaptation and Extreme Events" brought together insights from climate projection, field-based assessments, farmer perceptions, and institutional decision-making. The five accepted articles highlight the diverse ways climate risks manifest and the adaptive response being developed across different contexts. Together, these contributions reflect a balanced mix of climate modeling, field observation, behavioral analysis, and institutional analysis, spanning geographies (Ghana, Ethiopia, California, China), scales (from local field to basin to institutional), and methods (quantitative modeling, survey, field observation, qualitative discussions). Despite these advances, several gaps constrain actionable adaptation. First, the capacity to predict seasonal and interannual variability remains limited: many systems lose skill beyond one to two weeks, leaving little actionable guidance for managing droughts, heatwaves, or wildfires beyond those two weeks. Operational skill in the 2-week to monthly (seasonal) period remains weak in many regions, particularly for precipitation forecasts (Robertson et al., 2020;Yin et al., 2023). Moreover, most climate modeling works remain narrowly sectoral and rarely incorporate cross-sectoral dynamics. Consequently, advances in climate modeling seldom translate into actionable farm-level decision support, limiting adoption. This gap is further reinforced by institutional tendencies to prioritize technical specialists over boundary spanners, professionals who can bridge research, facilitation, and decisionmaking (Bednarek et al., 2018;Cross et al., 2022;England et al., 2018).Second, compound and cascading events, such as drought followed by heat and wildfire, or flood combined with pest outbreaks, are still underexplored, even though they pose growing real-world risks (Ebi, 2025;Haqiqi et al., 2021;Schillerberg and Tian, 2024;Tripathy et al., 2023;Walden et al., 2023).Third, scale and heterogeneity constrain adaptation, as local lessons are difficult to generalize, and cross-scale dynamics are often missing (Berger et al., 2019;Fossa et al., 2021;Holman et al., 2019;Maciejewski et al., 2015).Fourth, while governance framework and equity are frequently discussed but less often operationalized, with insufficient emphasis on implementation that addresses the needs of marginalized groups, women, and small-holder farmers (Araos et al., 2021;Cannon et al.;Chu and Cannon, 2021).Fifth, monitoring, evaluation, and adaptive learning need to be improved across scales, to learn from failures, and build cumulative knowledge (Dupuits et al., 2024;Goodwin and Olazabal, 2025;Sparkes and Werners, 2023;UCFCCC, 2023). To enhance impact, research and practice should prioritize developing integrated climateextreme forecasting tools spanning sub-seasonal to decadal time scales, directly linking to practical agricultural decisions such as planting schedules, irrigation planning, and insectpest control. Analyses of compound and cascading events are necessary to develop multirisk adaptation strategies that mirror real-world conditions. To bridge research and practice, professionals are needed who combine data and scientific expertise with facilitation skills to work with farmers, translating research into actions. Equity and vulnerability assessment must explicitly identify and document who benefits and who is left behind. Monitoring and feedback systems should be strengthened to support continuous learning and cross-site knowledge exchange. Finally, effective policies, innovative institutions, and accessible technologies are critical to convert research into practical, scalable, and socially inclusive adaptation. The five articles collectively demonstrate the breadth and depth of climate change adaptation research, from projections in Ghana and China to social and institutional studies in Ethiopia and California. They reveal progress in modeling, field measurements, behavioral understanding, and decision support, while also highlighting persistent gaps in extremes prediction, compound stress integration, scalability, and equity. Addressing these gaps requires bridging robust climate science with participatory, inclusive, cross-sectoral, and adaptive approaches. Agricultural and natural resource systems can achieve long-term resilience to climate change only by connecting predictive models, local knowledge, governance, and practical decision support.