Drought Decision Calendars for Specialty Crops

This webinar will highlight a recent project engaging specialty crop growers in the Midwest to better understand the seasonality of their decisions and drought information needs. The project has resulted in graphical decision calendars for grape, apple, cranberry, and irrigated potato production. Decision calendars describe the timing of management practices and decisions that are made throughout crop planting, growing, harvest, and dormant seasons, along with the climate-related concerns that impact the outcomes of management decisions. Decision calendars can help identify opportunities for inserting climate information into a decision process. We will discuss how decision calendars can be used to communicate and improve the usability of drought/climate monitoring and prediction science.

The project was administered through NOAA’s Sectoral Application Research Program and funded by the National Integrated Drought Information System.