Records |
Author |
Kipling, R.P.; Bannink, A.; Bellocchi, G.; Dalgaard, T.; Fox, N.J.; Hutchings, N.J.; Kjeldsen, C.; Lacetera, N.; Sinabell, F.; Topp, C.F.E.; van Oijen, M.; Virkajärvi, P.; Scollan, N.D. |
Title |
Modeling European ruminant production systems: Facing the challenges of climate change |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2016 |
Publication |
Agricultural Systems |
Abbreviated Journal |
Agricultural Systems |
Volume |
147 |
Issue |
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Pages |
24-37 |
Keywords |
Food security; Livestock systems; Modeling; Pastoral systems; Policy support; Ruminants |
Abstract |
Ruminant production systems are important producers of food, support rural communities and culture, and help to maintain a range of ecosystem services including the sequestering of carbon in grassland soils. However, these systems also contribute significantly to climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while intensi- fication of production has driven biodiversity and nutrient loss, and soil degradation. Modeling can offer insights into the complexity underlying the relationships between climate change, management and policy choices, food production, and the maintenance of ecosystem services. This paper 1) provides an overview of how ruminant systems modeling supports the efforts of stakeholders and policymakers to predict, mitigate and adapt to climate change and 2) provides ideas for enhancing modeling to fulfil this role. Many grassland models can predict plant growth, yield and GHG emissions from mono-specific swards, but modeling multi-species swards, grassland quality and the impact of management changes requires further development. Current livestock models provide a good basis for predicting animal production; linking these with models of animal health and disease is a prior- ity. Farm-scale modeling provides tools for policymakers to predict the emissions of GHG and other pollutants from livestock farms, and to support the management decisions of farmers from environmental and economic standpoints. Other models focus on how policy and associated management changes affect a range of economic and environmental variables at regional, national and European scales. Models at larger scales generally utilise more empirical approaches than those applied at animal, field and farm-scales and include assumptions which may not be valid under climate change conditions. It is therefore important to continue to develop more realistic representations of processes in regional and global models, using the understanding gained from finer-scale modeling. An iterative process of model development, in which lessons learnt from mechanistic models are ap- plied to develop ‘smart’ empirical modeling, may overcome the trade-off between complexity and usability. De- veloping the modeling capacity to tackle the complex challenges related to climate change, is reliant on closer links between modelers and experimental researchers, and also requires knowledge-sharing and increasing technical compatibility across modeling disciplines. Stakeholder engagement throughout the process of model development and application is vital for the creation of relevant models, and important in reducing problems re- lated to the interpretation of modeling outcomes. Enabling modeling to meet the demands of policymakers and other stakeholders under climate change will require collaboration within adequately-resourced, long-term inter-disciplinary research networks |
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Publisher |
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Place of Publication |
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Language |
English |
Summary Language |
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Original Title |
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Series Editor |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Volume |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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ISSN |
0308521x |
ISBN |
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Medium |
Review |
Area |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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Notes |
LiveM, ft_macsur |
Approved |
no |
Call Number |
MA @ admin @ |
Serial |
4734 |
Permanent link to this record |
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Author |
Mansouri, M.; Destain, M.-F. |
Title |
Predicting biomass and grain protein content using Bayesian methods |
Type |
Journal Article |
Year |
2015 |
Publication |
Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment |
Abbreviated Journal |
Stoch. Environ. Res. Risk Assess. |
Volume |
29 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
1167-1177 |
Keywords |
crop model; particle filter; prediction; ensemble kalman filter; parameter-estimation; particle filters; decision-support; state estimation; model; nitrogen; navigation; tracking; systems |
Abstract |
This paper deals with the problem of predicting biomass and grain protein content using improved particle filtering (IPF) based on minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence. The performances of IPF are compared with those of the conventional particle filtering (PF) in two comparative studies. In the first one, we apply IPF and PF at a simple dynamic crop model with the aim to predict a single state variable, namely the winter wheat biomass, and to estimate several model parameters. In the second study, the proposed IPF and the PF are applied to a complex crop model (AZODYN) to predict a winter-wheat quality criterion, namely the grain protein content. The results of both comparative studies reveal that the IPF method provides a better estimation accuracy than the PF method. The benefit of the IPF method lies in its ability to provide accuracy related advantages over the PF method since, unlike the PF which depends on the choice of the sampling distribution used to estimate the posterior distribution, the IPF yields an optimum choice of this sampling distribution, which also utilizes the observed data. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated in terms of estimation accuracy, root mean square error, mean absolute error and execution times. |
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English |
Summary Language |
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Original Title |
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Series Editor |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Edition |
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ISSN |
1436-3240 1436-3259 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
Article |
Area |
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Notes |
CropM |
Approved |
no |
Call Number |
MA @ admin @ |
Serial |
4664 |
Permanent link to this record |