A method for early warning

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Book

Title:	A method for early warning
Author:	Snijders, Tom A.B.
Year:	1988
Pages:	29
Language:	English
City of publisher:	Groningen
Publisher:	Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
ISBN:	9036700876
Geographic term:	Burkina Faso
Subjects:	rain agricultural production millet
Abstract:	A method for early warning and crop forecasting is proposed in which yield-rainfall models are combined with statistical models for the daily rainfall process. These rainfall models can be estimated from historical rainfall data, which are more amply available than historical crop yield data. The method gives a prediction interval for crop yield, or for an index for crop yield. An example is worked out for the prediction of sorghum yield in the region of Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso. A model for the daily rainfall process is estimated in which the process of wet and dry days is a nonstationary Markov chain, while the rainfall quantities on wet days have gamma distributions. It turns out that a reliable crop yield forecast is possible only late in the growing season.