This pasture production model provides a map of Available Metabolic Energy (EMD) for a region in Andalusia. The model is based on the doctoral thesis of Passera Sassi from 1999, where equations were calibrated using field measurements.
The objective of this work was to spatially model pasture production using available spatial information layers for the region, while also identifying limitations and ways to enhance these models. This was achieved using Google Earth Engine, which facilitates cloud-based processing.
The final maps generated are those of available metabolic energy and also the parameters resulting from the equations used, that is, the number of pasture species considered in the original studies (n) in addition to indicators of the goodness of fit of the model to the observed data, given by the coefficient of determination (r2).
The maps were masked using a certainty layer, presenting data only in the sites that have the greatest environmental similarity with the study sites where the equations were calibrated. For this, the Mahalanobis distance of environmental variables (accumulated precipitation, average temperature, evapotranspiration and height) was calculated in relation to the original study sites.