Application of TAMSAT-ALERT soil moisture forecasts for planting date decision support in Africa
Application of TAMSAT-ALERT soil moisture forecasts for planting date decision support in Africa
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DOI：
10.3389/fclim.2022.993511
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发表时间：
2023-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
E. Black;D. Asfaw;Alex Sananka;S. Aston;V. Boult;Ross Maidment
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作者：
E. Black;D. Asfaw;Alex Sananka;S. Aston;V. Boult;Ross Maidment
决定何时种植对非洲的小农至关重要。如果过早播种，农民就有可能在雨水不充足的情况下死亡幼苗;如果播种太晚，就没有足够的雨水来维持作物度过关键的发育期。在这项研究中，我们提出了一个新的决策支持工具（DST），占权衡早期和晚期种植的风险，通过作物水分供应的短期和长期预测的基础上的massories。与大多数现有的业务系统，这是完全基于降雨量，DST在这里使用集合预报的土壤水分估计最佳种植日期在当地规模。在肯尼亚、卢旺达、乌干达、赞比亚和马拉维，使用超过30，000个种植日期和产量的观察结果进行的评估表明，在最佳时间种植将使总体产量增加7-10%，对于晚种植的农民，产量增加高达20%。One Acre Fund已于2019-2020、2020-2021及2021-2022季度试行DST，并有强烈需求进一步扩展服务。我们从评估和试点中得出结论，种植日期DST有可能加强农民的决策，从而提高他们对气候变异和变化的适应能力。
Deciding when to plant is critical for smallholders in Africa. If they plant too early, farmers risk seedling death if the rains are not established; if they plant too late, there will not be enough rain to sustain the crop through critical development periods. In this study, we present a new decision support tool (DST) that accounts for the trade-off in the risks of early and late planting through advisories based on both short- and long-range forecasts of crop water availability. Unlike most existing operational systems, which are based solely on rainfall, the DST presented here uses ensemble forecasts of soil moisture to estimate the optimal planting date at a local scale. Evaluations using >30,000 observations of planting date and yield in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Malawi demonstrate that that planting at the optimal time would increase yield by 7–10% overall, and up to 20% for late planting farmers. The DST has been piloted by One Acre Fund for the 2019–2020, 2020–2021, and 2021–2022 seasons and there is strong demand for the service to be extended further. We conclude from the evaluations and pilots that the planting date DST has the potential to strengthen farmer decision making and hence their resilience to climate variability and change.