Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
5752416 | Water Resources and Industry | 2017 | 8 Pages |
Abstract
The goal of our study is to safeguard and promote regional beef production while mitigating its environmental footprint. Conducting a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) including green water footprint (GWF) is one of the objectives. This manuscript describes the estimation of GWF of animal feed crops including grasses of native range and introduced pasture, winter pasture and small grains typical to Southern Great Plains. The estimates are based on modeled evapotranspiration from Agricultural Policy Environmental Extender (APEX) model under Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) framework. NTT simulated crop growth, water balance, animal grazing, and manure management using 47 years of weather data from 1960. Our results aggregated by county indicate grasses in the native range and field crops used as winter pasture show smaller GWF than grasses in the introduced pasture and small grains. Animal stocking rate appears to be directly correlated with water requirement to produce a unit quantity of forage.
Keywords
American Society of Agricultural and Biological EngineersNRCASABESGPNRCSARSNASSAPEXNTTUSDAGreen waterLCAEvapotranspirationLife cycle analysisConservation practiceAgricultural Research ServiceNatural Resource Conservation ServiceSouthern Great plainsUnited States Department of AgricultureFootprintNational Research Councilanimal unitGrazingBeef
Related Topics
Life Sciences
Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Aquatic Science
Authors
Narayanan Kannan, Edward Osei, Oscar Gallego, Ali Saleh,