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Using seasonal climate scenarios in the ForageAhead annual forage production model for early drought impact assessment

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

High interannual variability of forage production in semi-arid grasslands leads to uncertainties when livestock producers make decisions such as buying additional feed, relocating animals, or using flexible stocking. Within-season predictions of annual forage production (i.e., yearly production) can provide specific boundaries for producers to make these decisions with more information and possibly with higher confidence. We use a recently developed forage production model, ForageAhead, that uses environmental and seasonal climate variables to estimate the annual forage production approximated by remotely sensed vegetation data. The model uses observed seasonal climate data from winter and spring as an input together with summer climate scenarios (e.g., extremely warm and dry, moderately cool and wet) that are based on historic observations. Using these summer climate scenarios we were able to capture the interannual variability in the spatial extent of abnormally low and high biomass production in the western portion of the United States for years 2000-2018. The ForageAhead predictions captured similar spatial patterns of forage anomalies as another similar model (Grass-Cast). This method can be made available in a user-friendly automated system used by livestock producers and rangeland managers to inform within-season management decisions, which can be especially valuable for flexible stocking as it provides a range of possible annual forage production scenarios by the end of May.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/7c3476d1b2e2fcec6b565beeb74da96d
Identifier USGS:63b89307d34e92aad3cc7d04
Data Last Modified 20230125
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 32ab090b-15bd-4bce-8e45-c351797036d8
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -134.35028399,21.970497251,-92.386332086,51.911725628
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 7434f1da7a7e32a1b9fea6f7b99269d80e95dbb6d0451138e312869f77a30cda
Source Schema Version 1.1
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