在国际上提高旱地牧草的经济绩效面临着来自经济,生态,和气候压力。这些干旱地区的利益相关者希望保护牧草生态系统,同时确保牧场的经济可行性。尽管最近取得了一些研究成果,迄今为止,很少有工作整合了降水之间的关系,放牧压力,动物表演,和牧草生产,以保护面临的经济收入,生态,和干旱地区的气候压力。这项工作通过开发一个经验数学规划模型来解决这一差距,该模型用于优化适应多种压力源的牧草生态系统上放牧的经济绩效。它的独特贡献是制定和应用使用正数学规划校准的牧场收入优化模型。该模型复制了观察到的经济,牧草,和气候条件,同时考虑到库存率之间的相互作用关系,饲草条件,放牧压力,动物表演,和牧场经济生产力。结果表明,牧场收入从每英亩5美元到88美元不等,牧草的边际价值从每磅牧草0.01美元到0.12美元不等,取决于经济,生态,和气候条件。结果揭示了所有这些压力因素如何影响放牧水平的经济优化选择,牧场收入,以及在美国西部看到的一系列六个生物群落的饲料经济价值。结果有助于牧场主调整放牧和饲料选择,以及寻求灵活的政府计划以适应经济变化的农场决策者,生态,和气候条件。这项工作的重要性来自于对国际干旱地区牧草管理问题的适用性。
Improving the economic performance of range forage in drylands internationally faces challenges from economic, ecological, and climate stress. Stakeholders in these drylands wish to protect range forage ecosystems while assuring economic viability of ranching. Despite several recent research achievements, little work to date has integrated relationships among precipitation, grazing pressure, animal performance, and forage production to protect ranching incomes faced with economic, ecological, and climate stress in dryland areas. This work addresses that gap by developing an empirical mathematical programming model for optimizing economic performance of livestock grazing on range forage ecosystems that adapt to several stressors. Its unique contribution is to formulate and apply a ranch income optimization model calibrated using positive mathematical programming. The model replicates observed economic, forage, and climate conditions while accounting for interacting relations among stocking rates, forage conditions, grazing pressure, animal performance, and ranch economic productivity. Results show ranch incomes ranging from about $5 to $88 per acre and marginal values of forage ranging from $0.01 to $0.12 per pound of forage, depending on economic, ecological, and climate conditions. Results reveal how all these stressors affect economically optimized choices of grazing levels, ranch income, and economic values of forage for a range of six biomes seen in the US west. Results help livestock ranchers to adjust stocking and forage choices as well as farm policymakers who seek flexible government programs to adapt to changes in economic, ecological, and climate conditions. The work\'s importance comes from applicability to forage management problems in dry regions internationally.