An enhanced approach for estimating grassland yield potential under various cutting regimes

摘要

The study introduces a GIS (Geographic Information System) tool that assesses the potential biomass yield of grassland based on data for 6-cut management yield measurements from two long-term grassland field trials with multiple fertilization schemes.Therefore, a two-step approach is developed and implemented in GIS. First, a dynamic daily soil water balance model is applied and its outputs are then used to estimate biomass production. The grassland yield model is based on the statistical model, which takes as predictors accumulated temperature, global radiation and water stress, as well as cutting and fertilization to estimate grassland production. The daily meteorological data are interpolated over the domain using very high resolution. These data are then processed by the water balance model (WBM) in each grid in combination with grid-specific information about soil, growing dynamics and cutting regime frequency in order to obtain grid-specific water stress factors. The result is used by GRAssland statistical Model (GRAM) and combined with the seasonal sum of temperature and global radiation. The major innovation of this approach is the focus on spatial aspects of production potential through incorporation of the model algorithms into GIS.