Climate Information for Agronomic Decision Tools

The USDA-NIFA funded project Useful to Usable has brought together a unique set of individuals combining climatological, agronomic, economic and social science backgrounds to develop tools for agronomic decision-making. One of the main outcomes has been a suite of decision tools usable across the Corn Belt. The agronomic and economics of these decision tools will be discussed in other parts of the session. While all have some climate component, several have very specific climate emphases especially using historical climate information. These include the AgClimate View, Growing Degree Day Tool, and the Climate Patterns Viewing. One additional tool being deployed uses projected climate information, the Irrigation Decision Tool. All the tools seek to apply climatic information to decisions or information corn belt producers need throughout their growing season by combining basic climate information with agronomic needs. The GDD tool uses current and historical information to track GDDs across the corn belt and provides a projection through the rest of the season until freezing or black layer. The Climate Patterns Viewer provides Corn Belt specific composites of several climate patterns (like El Nino) for producers to track what conditions tend to occur in these events. Agclimate view combines local climatic and yield information for producers to compare current and prior growing seasons. The Irrigation decision tool provides decision information on the economics of irrigation infrastructure purchase based on future climate projections. The tools achieve one of the main goals of the project, to create common corn belt tools for corn producers taking basic climate information converted into decision-making information.