Pasture Growth Alert Report
What is a Pasture Growth Alert report?
The Pasture Growth Alert (PGA) report provides an assessment of reduced pasture growth and pasture resilience risk for a property [lot(s)/plan]. The PGA report can be used to assist in stock and property management decisions to increase property resilience to drought and help to identify pasture recovery opportunities by assessing the property’s:
- last 12 months pasture growth
- pasture growth forecast for the next 6 months
- the monthly total cover percentile
What is included in the report?
The Pasture Growth Alert report includes:
- background information for current and historical property context
- a pasture growth and resilience indicator showing the risk level of reduced pasture growth and pasture resilience for the next 6 months
- a summary of factors contributing to the risk level of reduced pasture growth and pasture resilience
- modelled pasture growth graphs for last 12 months and next 6 months
- a monthly percentile cover map showing how the property compares with the historical cover record for the same month
- 12-month regional rainfall and modelled pasture growth percentile maps (i.e. relative to history) to provide spatial context of the property to the local and surrounding shires
- suggested management considerations to support each different level of risk
- a GeoPDF file showing georeferenced data that relates an image from the PDF report to coordinates on a map - allowing the user to have some limited mapping functions such as turning map layers on and off. The GeoPDF for this report can be used in applications such as Avenza maps or Adobe Acrobat.
Note: there are no legends on the geoPDF files. To understand the categories when you are using the geoPDFs onsite, you need to reference the legend on the pdf report (digital or printed).
Report sample and guides
Pasture Growth Alert report sample (PDF, 693 KB).
2-page “quick guide” of the PGA report (PDF, 1.8 KB).
A more detailed description of the PGA report is available in the FORAGE User Guide (PDF, 5.1 MB).
The Pasture Growth Alert report—the latest addition to the FORAGE suite
Subscription option
Periodic subscriptions (1, 2 or 3 months) are available for this report. See here for more information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe.
Common questions about the Pasture Growth Alert report
The PGA report provides an assessment of reduced pasture growth and pasture resilience risk for a property. The PGA report can be used to assist in stock and property management decisions to increase property resilience to drought and help to identify pasture recovery opportunities.
The PGA shows the level of risk for the selected land holding, which is estimated by using:
- the property rainfall and modelled pasture growth for the last 12 months
- the property rainfall and modelled pasture growth forecast for the next 6 months
- the forecast of ENSO probability for the next three months
- the most recent monthly ground cover for the property compared with the historical record
There are suggested management considerations for each different level of risk. These consideration options are guides only and more detailed advice may be required to achieve best management practice.
Pasture growth forecasts are produced using the GRASP pasture growth model in combination with rainfall outlooks and current pasture conditions with regard to soil moisture, nutrients and ground cover.
The rainfall outlooks are developed from the ENSO forecasts provided by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, New York (IRI; Barnston, et al. 2004).
A ‘percentile’ dataset (i.e. divided into one hundred sections, then ranked lowest to highest) for comparing historical records can be also represented as ‘terciles’ (i.e. divided into 3 sections).
The 33rd - 66th percentile is the middle ‘tercile’, which for this report is related as the ‘long term average’, that the property pasture growth or ground cover is being compared to.
The PGA report can be used to assist you in your stock and property management decisions to increase enterprise resilience and avoid impact of drought by assessing the:
- last 12 months pasture growth
- pasture growth outlook for next 6 months (including month to date growth)
- the current monthly total ground cover relative to history
There are suggested management considerations to support each different level of risk. These considerations options are guides only and more detailed advice may be required to achieve best management practice.
