On the issue of forecasting crop yields for the purposes of adaptive landscape agriculture

Abstract

Long-term monitoring (1998–2023) of the yield of clover-timothy grass stands of the first year of use was carried out in order to find patterns of influence of landscape environmental conditions on it in various agroclimatic conditions. The research was conducted within the moraine hill located at the Gubino VNIIMZ agro-testing site in the Tver region. Soil-forming rocks are two-membered deposits consisting of an upper layer composed of relatively light rocks, underlain by moraine bouldery loam. The grass stands were exploited without fertilizers in a single-cut mode on a field divided into 120 plots. Using regression analysis, the influence of landscape and soil environment factors was determined: relief, physical and agrochemical properties of soils on grass yield, as well as the dependence of the degree of this impact on climatic conditions. It was found that the yield of perennial grasses is most strongly influenced by various fractions of the granulometric composition of soils – from stones to dust (up to 16 % of its variability) and the altitude of the location (up to 38 %), since the thermal and water-air characteristics of soils and vegetation largely depend on them. Terrain characteristics such as steepness and curvature of the surface have a minor impact on grass yield (up to 12 %). The degree of influence of agro-landscape environmental factors on the growth of grasses is largely regulated by fluctuations in weather conditions. “Climate scenarios” of a specific factor – sets of weather parameters under which its effect on the production process of a crop is manifested – in the years of sowing and mowing, as a rule, do not differ fundamentally. Knowing the nature of the influence of climatic factors allows us to more accurately predict crop yields within an agricultural landscape and, thus, optimize the location of crops on the territory of a particular farm.