{"id":51526,"date":"2024-09-30T11:19:09","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T10:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=51526"},"modified":"2024-09-30T11:19:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T10:19:09","slug":"new-grant-will-help-develop-support-tool-for-extreme-weather-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/new-grant-will-help-develop-support-tool-for-extreme-weather-events\/51526\/","title":{"rendered":"New grant will help develop support tool for extreme weather events"},"content":{"rendered":"
The $434,038 Seeding Solutions grant from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research will help farmers better manage crop production from risks of extreme weather events across the Tennessee River Basin and surrounding southeast US regions.<\/p>\n
UT is providing matching funds for a total investment of $966,119 over the three year project.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that extreme weather events are responsible for\u202f90%\u202fof crop losses<\/a>. These estimates are generally based on annual climate conditions.<\/p>\n However, extreme short-term weather events, termed \u2018flash\u2019 droughts and floods, can severely impact crop production.<\/p>\n These events have not been researched to the same extent, which has led to the development of better crop management tools for farmers.<\/p>\n Using novel combinations of watershed hydrology models and monitoring data, including satellites and on-site field monitoring, researchers are developing a decision-support tool that will allow stakeholders to prepare for unpredictable conditions brought about by extreme weather events such as flash floods<\/a> and drought.<\/p>\n The collaborative research team is led by John Schwartz, the director of the Tennessee Water Resources Research Center and a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. It also includes Ming Jin, director of the Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment, Brian Leib, and Shawn Hawkins with the UT Institute of Agriculture.<\/p>\n The researchers are exploring how existing hydrologic and crop models can be combined with historical trends and current monitoring data to inform crop choice, irrigation needs, and farm management.<\/p>\n Results are expected to help minimise crop losses and increase yield, maximise water use efficiency, and enhance the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe decision support tool for row crop producers being developed by our UT research team will provide them useful predictive information,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be particularly useful for short-term, extreme weather hazards, considering in recent years weather patterns in this region have more often shifted to a wetter spring followed by a flash drought early summer, which creates producer challenges of when to plant and whether irrigation is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new grant will help develop and test a decision support tool to protect farmers and crops from the risks of extreme weather events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":51527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24433],"tags":[550,758],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPreparing for unpredictable conditions<\/h3>\n
Minimising crop loss<\/h3>\n