Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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Queensland, calculations are made for all wheat-growing districts in Aus-
tralia. The alert is based on the likelihood of shire yields falling below the
10th percentile. Projected yields are calculated using rainfall from analogue
years based on phases of the SOI as described previously for pastures. The
calculations are made in near-real time using climate and rainfall from
the spatial modeling framework. Similar calculations based on STIN are
also made by Agriculture Western Australia
(http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/
Operational Reports
A
n operational monthly report, “A Summary of Seasonal Conditions in
Q
ueensland,” has been developed for grazing lands in northeastern Aus-
tr
alia (Day and Paull, 2001;
http://www.LongPaddock.qld.gov.au/About
U
s/Publications/ByAuthor/KenDay).
This report combines a range of in-
fo
rmation including rainfall, pasture growth, remote sensing, and fore-
ca
sts of rainfall and pasture growth into a four-page color leaflet. A similar
pr
oduct, “Regional Crop Outlook: Wheat,” has now been developed for
w
heat in northeastern Australia
(http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/climate).
Each
of
these products can be adapted to a national basis. Drought alerts for
pa
stures and crops, as well as pasture condition alerts, have been incorpo-
ra
ted into a more comprehensive prototype booklet (Day and Paull, 2001).
A
formal survey of the recipients of the seasonal conditions leaflet endorsed
th
e usefulness of these reports. However, the production of these reports
ha
s been suspended due to the lack of demand and funding.
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11.
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C
onclusions
The impacts of drought in Australia have been considerable, particularly
at local scales, and it is important to mitigate them. In the past, govern-
ments have responded both during and after drought occurrence, in most
cases prompted by the applications for assistance from primary producers.
However, government policies are now directed toward a more proactive
response to drought to enhance the self-reliance of primary producers. The
monitoring system, described in this chapter, has the capacity to focus at-
tention on regions experiencing drought and those most likely to experi-
ence drought within a few months. What is required is to link the national-
scale drought monitoring to a focused and timely campaign to encourage
pr
imary producers to prepare for drought forecasts. To this end, a variety
of tools are available to assess management options at a farm scale.
It is important to continue to evaluate the accuracy of the modeling
framework and, in particular, the drought monitoring and alert compo-
nents. Apart from the real-time evaluation of the operational system, the
most valuable evaluation will come through case studies of historical
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