Rangeland Modeling - Forage, Water, And Nutrients: Species Competition And Tree Effects

摘要

Diverse uses of pasture and rangeland - from grazing to watersheds, wildlife habitats, and recreations — require an improved understanding of basic ecological processes and the effect of these processes on productivity, environmental pollution, and management practices. On going research is being conducted to develop computer-based modeling and decision support systems that help address research as well as management issues in pasture and rangeland based livestock production systems. This paper presents theoretical development and field evaluation for modeling grazing system productivity and environmental impact. This modeling tool includes multispecies naturalized pasture and tree effects in silvopastoral systems. Due to its complexity and large data and computing requirement, this tool is made available on the Internet where all the computation and data needed for simulation reside on a local server. A Web-based interface is developed to facilitate input data entry and output visualization.