US: Soil moisture is a more important indicator than rainfall

Models using the soil moisture index explain 30-120% more of the annual variation in crop yields than models that rely on rainfall. Scientists from Harvard believe so, confirming it with the results of their research. This is reported by Future Farming. It is noted that for a long time American agricultural science, in particular the famous scientist Jonathan Proctor, who has a PhD in agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley, has tried to explain why the importance of water is not reflected in statistical yield models. "Studies that analyze how yield responds to temperature and precipitation tend to find that temperature (the sum of active temperatures, ed.) matters much more than water, even though we understand from plant physiology that temperature , and moisture are very important for crops. Solving this puzzle is critical to quantifying how climate change will affect global yields," says Prof. Proctor. A research group from Harvard put ...