Spatially explicit modelling of the impact of climate changes on pasture production in the North Island,New Zealand

Abstract

To assess the potential impact of climate changes on pasture production in the North Island, New Zealand, eight climate scenarios of increased temperature and increased (or decreased) rainfall were investigated by integrating a polynomial regression model for pasture production with a Geographic Information System (GIS). The results indicated that the climate change scenarios assuming an increase in temperature by 1-2°C and a rainfall change by −20 to +20% would have a very significant impact on pasture production with a predicted pasture production variation from −46.2 to +51.9% compared with the normal climate from 1961-1990. Increased temperature would generally have a positive effect on pasture production in the south and southeast of the North Island, and increased rainfall would have a positive effect in the central, south and southeast of the North Island and a negative effect in the north of the North Island. The interaction of decreased rainfall and increased temperature would have a negative impact for the whole North Island except some central areas with high rainfall. Relevant management practices for coping with potential climate change are discussed.

Simulating Guinea Grass Production: Empirical and Mechanistic Approaches

“…Managing these intensive production systems requires the design of sustainable and resilient farming systems in an increasingly variable (climate and markets) environment (Parry et al, 2009). Forage production models that take into account the influence of the climate, soil, and management can be useful to achieve high production efficiencies (Andales et al, 2006; Laughlin et al, 2007), estimate impacts from expected changes in climate (Zha et al, 2005; Zhang et al, 2007; Parry et al, 2009), and identify and quantify benefits and trade‐offs from alternative adaptation options (Thornley and Cannell, 1997; Zhang et al, 2007; Meinke et al, 2009).…”

Climate change and future scenarios for palisade grass production in the state of São Paulo, Brazil

“…Despite the comparative limitation due to difference on photosynthetic process of both tropical and temperate forage grasses, the results have a similar response pattern. Most studies point out predominantly to an yield increase (from 5 to more than 50%) (Baars et al, 1990;Zhang et al, 2007), but in scenarios with increased water deficit, yield can be reduced (Zhang et al, 2007).…”

An Integrated Framework for Predicting Long-Term Productivity of Pastures in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“…We believe that the solutions and methods [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] have some limitations, e.g., they are expensive, time-consuming to learn, complex and not efficient for decision support applications. Furthermore, these methods/solutions are not able to answer critical questions, such as the relationship of arable land with respect to inland features (such as vegetation, population centers and highways) in arable patches and considering their impact on production, while using the geometric network model.…”

“…In addition to the already discussed related work, many other researchers (both from academia and from industry) have presented IT-based solutions to address agriculturerelated problems (e.g., [12,14,20,21]). Our initial studies indicate that in a region such as Saudi Arabia, with its particular climactic factors, weather effects and nature of soil changes, a single ES-or DSS-based approach may not be sufficient (as also mentioned in [1]).…”