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Home Page: http://www.wcrl.ars.usda.gov/

Mission:
The MU seeks to develop optimum resource management strategies to meet national agricultural product requirements within the context of possible changes in the global environment. Specifically, the unit seeks to (a) develop new methods to assess water and carbon dioxide fluxes in the soil plant-atmosphere system, quantify plant stress and its effect on crop yieldand to predict effects of increasing carbon dioxide and climate change on plant growth and water use; (b) develop suitable new and alternative crops to meet national needs for renewable, agriculturally-based industrial prod-ucts; and (c) develop remote sensing and related techniques as tools in water conservation, irrigation scheduling, drought prediction and avoidance& to monitor crop conditions & assess environmental change. The program is designed to meet challenges & opportunities imposed by dynamic environmentsparticularly those stressful to plants and their possible effects on crop production. A theme of increasing plant water use efficiency and conserving and improving the quality of agricultural water supplies unites these efforts. To these ends, the organization is closely knit and multi- disciplinary, underlain by a philosophy of devising multifaceted approachesto critical problems associated with global environmental changes.