Long-term Production Forecast Using Climate-Vegetation Model

Plants consume water in the stages of growth and production through the process of transpiration.Evaporation from the soil surface may also occur at this time. This series of processes is referred to asevapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration is one of the important processes in hydrological circulation whileshortage of precipitation in arid and semi-arid rangelands is a significant limited factor of forage production.Therefore, in such situations, the use of conventional techniques for production estimate such as clipping andweighting are costly and disruptive. Balance model of climate-vegetation can partly solve the problems oflong-term production estimates. This model can be used in one area and then subsequently applied to otherareas with similar soil and vegetation without the need for cutting forage. Moreover, over the years, we canrevise the model by updating the data for different seasons which can then be used in different periods of time.We recommend using this method over other conventional methods in estimating the long-term forageproduction with regards to the occurrence of drought and wetness in order to determine the grazing capacityof rangelands and the development of the rangeland insurance industry.

Keywords:

Evapotranspiration , Climatic Data , Soil and Vegetation Characteristics , Production Forecast