Agrometeorology

Agrometeorology or Agricultural Meteorology involves the integration of climatological and meteorological data and techniques into agricultural problems, such as crop production, soil moisture, moisture stress, and migration of pests. Agrometeorology is the study and use of weather and climate information to enhance or expand agricultural crops and/or to increase crop production. Agrometeorology mainly involves the interaction of meteorological and hydrological factors, on one hand and agriculture, which encompasses horticulture, animal husbandry, and forestry. It is an interdisciplinary, holistic science forming a bridge between physical and biological sciences and beyond. It deals with a complex system involving soil, plant, atmosphere, agricultural management options, and others, which are interacting dynamically on various spatial and temporal scales. Specifically, the fully coupled soil-plant-atmosphere system has to be well understood in order to develop reasonable operational applications or recommendations for stakeholders. For these reasons, a comprehensive analysis of cause-effect relationships and principles that describe the influence of the state of the atmosphere, plants, and soil on different aspects of agricultural production, as well as the nature and importance of feedback between these elements of the system is necessary. Agrometeorological methods therefore use information and data from different key sciences such as soil physics and chemistry, hydrology, meteorology, crop and animal physiology and phenology, agronomy, and others. Observed information is often combined in more or less complex models, focused on various components of system parts such as mass balances, biomass production, crop growth and yield, and crop or pest phenology in order to detect sensitivities or potential responses of the soil-biosphere-atmosphere system. This book entitled Agrometeorology emphasizes on the application of meteorological information and data to weather sensitive problems of agriculture.