Upscaling modelled crop yields to regional scale: A case study using DSSAT for spring wheat on the Canadian prairies

Abstract

Huffman, T., Qian, B., De Jong, R., Liu, J., Wang, H., McConkey, B., Brierley, T. and Yang, J. 2015. Upscaling modelled crop yields to regional scale: A case study using DSSAT for spring wheat on the Canadian prairies. Can. J. Soil Sci. 95: 49–61. Dynamic crop models are often operated at the plot or field scale. Upscaling is necessary when the process-based crop models are used for regional applications, such as forecasting regional crop yields and assessing climate change impacts on regional crop productivity. Dynamic crop models often require detailed input data for climate, soil and crop management; thus, their reliability may decrease at the regional scale as the uncertainty of simulation results might increase due to uncertainties in the input data. In this study, we modelled spring wheat yields at the level of numerous individual soils using the CERES-Wheat model in the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) and then aggregated the simulated yields from individual soils to regi...