Scaling field results to the long-term

Scaling field results to examine long-term current and future climates

The purpose of the integrated systems modelling of the long term trials is to:

• Quantify which farming systems (cell grazing, crop and mixed crop/livestock rotations) best balance productivity, profitability and emissions performance to enhance drought resilience

• Examine the role of these farming systems in supporting long-term farm sustainability under future climates

• Determine the suitability of these farming systems across regions

Process

1. Calibrate and validate model/s based on current and past field experiments

2. Simulate system-level production (grain yield, pasture biomass and livestock output), whole-farm profitability and environmental implications (greenhouse gas emissions and soil carbon sequestration) for field sites under current and future climates, with focus on drought.

Biophysical, economic and environmental modelling

Main objective is to contrast economic, environmental and biophysical performance of various climate resilience adaptations (drought and others)

• Using field data from literature and current experiments (Dookie, Evandale and Wagga Wagga) to ground truth models

• Simulate biophysical, environmental and economic metrics for three trial sites and each satellite site

• Analysis include output yields (e.g. grain, livestock liveweight and wool production), profits (gross margins), emissions intensities (emissions per unit of grain, meat and wool produced)

• Implications of adaptations during and post-drought on yields, profits and environmental metrics

• Run calibrated systems across the South-Australian wheat belt and contrast outcomes under historical and future climates

Next Steps

• Environmental performance of various drought resilience adaptations

• Evaluate system performance under future climate scenarios using downscaled and bias-corrected climate model projections.

Research Team

Prof Matthew Harrison
Project Lead

Dr Ke Liu
Agricultural Systems Modeller

Dr Ranju Chapagain
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Agricultural Systems Modelling

Dr Karen Christie-Whitehead
Agricultural Systems Modeller

Prof Caroline Mohammed
Crop and plant science