In agriculture, simulation models are beginning to see widespread application as decision aids in planning, making production and environmental assessments, design, education, making precision farming decisions, and identifying site specific best management practices. Unfortunately, their usefulness is impeded by inadequate input data and knowledge deficiencies of the user.
Most models do not adequately account for the influences that different agricultural practices have on soil physical, chemical, and microbiologic properties. Switching from one farming system to another creates more variability by changing factors such as crop, planting date, fertilizer applications, and pesticide usage. To meet these needs, BESTAQUA was developed as a user-friendly computer program to aid producers, consultants, and agency personnel in determining management practices suitable for profitable crop production and water quality protection.
TRADITIONAL DECISION AIDS ARE REPLACED BY A USER-FRIENDLY EXPERT SYSTEMTraditional decision aids are replaced by a user-friendly science based expert system which incorporates multi-media features such as audio descriptions, slides, graphical displays, animation, and video presentations. BESTAQUA (Best Evaluation and Simulation Tool for Agricultural Water QUAlity) incorporates a conventional hydrologic simulation model with a user interface, knowledge acquisition from the user, a knowledge base, an inference engine, and explanatory functions. It can be used solely as a design methodology to develop site specific agricultural best management practices or as a water resources educational package.
An expert system is a tool which can replicate the decisions of an expert and thus making a system intelligent. Knowledge from hydrology, soil science, and engineering experts throughout the nation and Canada are being incorporated in this PC based software. This knowledge is used to select hydrologic properties based on limited information from the user, modify these properties based on land use changes such as tillage and crop rotations, and select appropriate water management practices and conduct assessments with the ADAPT hydrologic model which was developed at The Ohio State University. ADAPT is a model that considers daily: soil erosion and solute transport of nutrients and pesticides associated with runoff, infiltration, subsurface drainage, seepage, snowmelt, macropore flow, surface sealing and evapotranspiration.
An extensive decision support database has been incorporated into BESTAQUA. This information includes long term climatic files for many locations in the corn belt, and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) soils data.
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The user of the system identifies the location of a field to be evaluated and information on the farming system of interest. BESTAQUA then selects appropriate climatic and soils files for use with the ADAPT hydrologic model and provides all the necessary information based on expert knowledge. The user then has the option to modify any of the selected data. BESTAQUA then performs an analysis and identifies the probable environmental impacts. The user then has the ability to evaluate an alternative farming system and/or conduct a sensitivity analysis. |
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Through a collaborative study by 14 institutions, the United Soybean Board and the American Soybean Association have supported the development of a decision aid which links aspects of the ADAPT water quality model to CROPGRO. CROPGRO is a suite of crop growth models which can predict yields and consider the profitability of production systems. Subject to the availability of funding it is anticipated that aspects of this decision aid and BESTAQUA will be linked within the next few years. A watershed decision aid which incorporates ADAPT has also been developed with funding from the Lake Erie Protection Fund. Ongoing development work which is supported by the National Science Foundation and EPA will link an urban model to ADAPT. In the long term it is anticipated that this decision aid will incorporate an expert system.
DISTRIBUTION AND EDUCATIONWorkshops on BESTAQUA and the other decisions aids which incorporate ADAPT will be held when they are available for distribution. It is anticipated that the decision aids will be released to a few people for comprehensive testing. When all scientific, software and hardware issues are resolved the decision aids will be available for general release. A comprehensive plan on how this will be done and who will provide support service has not yet been established. The expectation is that the decision aids will be made available through a federal agency at a nominal cost.
AVAILABILITY OF BESTAQUADevelopment of the field and watershed versions of ADAPT are nearly completed. Results of studies with prototype versions of these models have provided promising results. A prototype version of the BESTAQUA expert system has been used as an educational tool and was well received by a class of engineers. However, BESTAQUA has not been fully developed and it is anticipated the release of this technology for use on a limited basis by consultants, agency personnel and producers will not occur until near the end of 1997.
A prototype of the linked ADAPT/CROPGRO decision aid has been developed and testing of this model by research scientists, producers and agency personnel will be undertaken during the next 12 months. Based on the outcome of this testing the decision aid should be available by the end of 1997.
CONTRIBUTORSBESTAQUA has been developed in an expert system environment at the Construction Laboratory for Automation and System Simulation (CLASS) of The Ohio State University. Other contributors include: the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science and the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering of The Ohio State University; and the United State Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service.
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