Exploring grass-based beef production under climate change by integration of grass and cattle growth models

摘要

Climate change affects livestock production on grasslands directly via an increased occurrence of heat stress, and indirectly via an effect on grass growth. Numerous models are used to simulate the effects of climate change on production of forages orfeed crops. However, models simulating the direct effects of climate change on livestock production are less abundant. Heat stress is studied with thermoregulation models simulating heat flows in animals. We incorporated a thermoregulation model in a model to simulate growth and production of beef cattle, named LiGAPS-Beef (Livestock simulator for Generic analysis of Animal Production Systems - Beef cattle) (Van der Linden et al.,2016).