Biophysical and economic models for assessing impacts of change on grazingland ecosystems

This paper integrates three models to derive information on socioeconomic impacts of climatic conditions and management approaches for a typical South Texas ranch. The authors apply PHYGROW to simulate conditions on a South Texas cattle and goat ranch. POPMIX was used to simulate forage production with two cattle : goat ratios (to represent different management strategies). Simulation results, as well as two ten-year weather scenarios (30% and 50% drought years to simulate normal and dryer conditions), and estimated animal production and operating costs, were incorporated into a firm level income and policy simulator (FLIPSIM), to yield integrated predictions of socioeconomic impacts.