1. S C I E N C E F O R D E C I S I O N M A K E R S
B u r e a u o f R u r a l S c i e n c e s
S C I E N C E F O R D E C I S I O N M A K E R S
James Walcott
D E P A R T M E N T O F A G R I C U L T U R E , F I S H E R I E S A N D F O R E S T R Y

2. Greg Laughlin James Walcott (climate) (agriculture)
Agroclimatic Characterization and Zoning Methods for Operational Applications:
Tools that make climate simple for agricultural decision makers
John Sims
(operations)
Greg Laughlin James Walcott
(climate) (agriculture)
Tim Brinkley
(methods)
Presented to WMO Workshop on Climate Analysis and Mapping for Agriculture. Bologna, June 2005.

6. Distribution of grain cropping in Australia

7. Outline
Operational uses
Rainfall reliability wizard: grain adaptation
Integrated toolset: productivity
Growest: pasture forecasts
National Monitoring system: drought policy
Conclusions/Future extensions

8. Operational Uses Agricultural adaptation Climate risks
Crop, livestock decisions
Climate risks
Fire risk, storm warning, frost warning
Agricultural risks
Pest & disease outbreaks, weed incursions, plague locust
Policy delivery
Natural resource management, conservation, rural policy, drought relief, quarantine

9. Rainfall Reliability Wizard
Bureau of Meteorology
rainfall grids:
100+ yrs
25 km sq
Analysis:
means
percentiles
between seasons
within seasons
event analysis
Display and access:
Laughlin et al (2003) Environmental Modelling and Software 18: 49-57

10. Probability of 50% seasonal mean

11. Reliability of achieving 25 mm/month for June – September

12. Distribution of available water capacity in soil profile across grain cropping zone

14. Integrated Toolset ANU Splin (Hutchinson 1990)
Interpolations using thin-plate splines
Independent factors such as altitude
Commercial in confidence

15. Livestock density in 2001

16. Integrated Toolset: relating primary productivity to livestock density
Low Medium High
Index of primary productivity
Low
Medium
High

17. GrowEst: simple estimates of plant growth
RI - Radiation index
Major climate drivers
in plant growth
TI - Temperature index
Radiation
Temperature
Moisture
Growth Index
GI = LI x TI x MI
MI - Moisture index
Fitzpatrick and Nix (1970) – GrowEst
Nix (1981)
Hutchinson, Nix and McMahon (1992)
Brinkley et al (2005)

20. The National Monitoring System
Analyses
Mapping
Regional Reports

21. Conclusions Also consider flexible, pragmatic systems that:
Analyse data rapidly
Provide simple outputs
Respond to wide range of requests
Use our skills to provide advice on output
Future
Weather Wizard (frost, growing degree days, vernalisation)
Climate change/adaptation

22. “… not … the simplicity this side of complexity,
but … the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Oliver Wendell Holmes