| | "Valuable information on local weather conditions and patterns can be critical when making farm management decisions," says Jim Broatch, insect pest management specialist with Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Stettler. "With links to weather information sites, producers can easily find many of the answers they require to help make farming decisions."
Evaluations about spraying (short term forecast for precipitation), crop, weed and pest development (heat accumulation and progress), crop choices (days for maturity), and farm record keeping can be more easily addressed when good agroclimatic data is available. Fortunately, there are many web locations where producers can obtain crop staging, weather and climate, crop development and insect and pest information.
- Alberta Agriculture has an excellent site, found under the Weather and Climate, Agroclimatic Information Service, Agriculture and Climate Information Viewer . This site uses drop-down menus to produce maps for topics such as precipitation, insects and disease, and even has an agroclimatic atlas with historic maps on growing season and frost-free days. On this site, the Weather Mapper option is recommend if looking for growing degree-day information.
- Alberta Agriculture also has an overall report on current Alberta conditions with precipitation and soil moisture maps
- Montana State has a site with information on crop development using growing degree-days.
- Pest monitoring, pesticide applications or crop staging for harvest can involve Growing Degree day (GDD). Recently, information involving the use of GDD has been suggested for planning swath grazing seeding dates for cereals. A website for information on GDD is www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/newslett.nsf/all/agnw9416
- The federal site for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) has current condition maps that show growing season and rolling maps that show 7, 30, 60 and 90-day precipitation accumulation. Visit www.agr.gc.ca/pfra/drought/pr_e.htm
"Another source of great information that I use repeatedly is FarmZone," says Broatch. "Insect and crop development can be forecast with degree-day accumulations. Degree-day development is usually calculated on a base temperature, and that varies among insects."
Once on the FarmZone website, at www.farmzone.com/, choose the map section in keeping with the location in question. Take the grasshopper hatch in the specific location for 2003, 2004, 2005 and compare that to 2006. The degree-day accumulation will be similar, but the dates will vary. This data can be found by clicking on the Historic link in the green bar at the top, above current conditions. Through this method it is possible to determine whether or not 2006 is ahead of normal degree-day (heat) development units by degree-days and how that translates to calendar days.
Short-term weather patterns affect planning, especially for spraying. For 72 hours (3 day) weather forecasts, visit www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/qpf_12hr.shtml. An additional interesting component of this website is a forecast of accumulated precipitation 0 to 72 hours in the future, broken down into 6 to 12 hour segments by clicking on the section of the map in question, such as the 12-hour forecast, that section will then enlarge. The geographic extent of this site tends to deal primarily with the United States, but it also covers most of Alberta's cropping zone, excluding the Peace River Region.
To access the sites referred to in this article, copy the link information into the address bar or simply visit Alberta Agriculture's website and locate this article under the Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section. The article will have active links to the information and various websites.
Contact: Jim Broatch (403) 742-7901 |
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