Agriculture
Home > Agriculture > Plant/Animal Production > Pasture production on the Northern Tablelands
Plant/Animal Production
Pasture production on the North West slopes
This material addresses aspects of the following syllabus outcome:
A student:
H2.1 describes the inputs, processes and interactions of plant production systems.
Syllabus content areas addressed in this material include:
Students learn about:
- plant production systems
- the constraints imposed by environmental factors, including light, temperature, available moisture, oxygen/carbon dioxide ratios, wind and biotic factors on plant growth, development and production
- the interaction of genotype with environment and the consequent opportunities for plant productivity
Students learn to:
- analyse and interpret agricultural data, for example animal performance measures, climatic information and crop production data.
Source: Board of Studies NSW (1999) Stage 6 Agriculture Syllabus
In the example titled, Pasture Production on the Northern Tablelands, you worked through an activity that modelled the skills of summarising information in a table, drawing graphs and conclusions. In this activity you will use climatic data and estimated growth rates for pastures to draw tables and graphs and form conclusions about pasture growth on the North West slopes of NSW. Before you complete this activity you should have studied the example Pasture Production on the Northern Tablelands.
North West Slopes
- Choose a site and gather the climatic data for a region.
Gunnedah is located on the North West Slopes and climatic data is available for it. In order to obtain the climatic average data you should visit the Bureau of Meteorology (Climatic Averages)
web site and locate the appropriate average climatic
data for Gunnedah. This data should include:
- mean daily maximum temp
- mean daily minimum temp
- mean rainfallfor each month of the year.
- Draw a graph presenting the climatic average data.
Just as the graph was drawn for Glen Innes in Pasture Production on the Northern Tablelands, presenting the climatic average data, you should draw a graph presenting the climatic average data for Gunnedah. - Draw a graph of estimated growth rate of pastures on the North West Slopes.
Draw a graph showing the growth rates of a variety of pasture species on the North West Slopes by using the raw data of dry matter gain per day (kg/ha/day) shown here.
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec phalaris/ sub clover 8 11 16 18 15 15 16 21 35 45 38 15 summer grass dominant 35 29 17 8 2 2 2 2 4 10 20 28 danthonia/sub clover 18 16 10 8 6 6 6 15 26 29 25 20 lucerne 23 22 24 22 16 15 12 16 23 25 22 20 sub clover dominant 0 2 3 4 5 7 8 11 27 35 28 5 medic dominant 0 2 3 4 5 5 6 8 30 35 19 0 oats 0 0 0 15 35 32 28 30 45 48 8 0 - Compare the graph presenting the climatic average data with the graph showing the estimated growth rate of pastures on the North West Slopes.
You should compare the pasture growth graph for the North West Slopes with the climatic average data for Gunnedah and draw some conclusions as was done for the Northern Tablelands.
|