Somkiat Apippatanavis is a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Under the direction of Dr. Balaji Rajagopalan, Somkiat's work involves the development of stochastic weather generators to generate multiple realizations of daily weather series consistent with historical data.

Learn more about Somkiat's research at his WWW site...

Federico Bert has an undergraduate degree in Agronomy and currently is a doctoral candidate in the Facultad de Agronomía (School of Agronomy) of the University of Buenos Aires. His dissertation is based on this project and he is involved in multiple aspects of the research.

Federico’s work focuses on the development of usable knowledge to enhance the use of climate information and to reduce the vulnerability of agricultural production systems to climate variability. His work involves two complementary approaches:

(1) Interactions with Argentine farmers and their technical advisors to describe production and marketing decisions related to two major crops in Argentina: maize and soybeans. Federico is investigating (a) the existence of entry points for climate information in the decision process, (b) specific needs for climate information, and (c) decision makers’ knowledge, perceptions, and beliefs about climate variability.

(2) Use of biophysical crop models to assess the outcomes of a range of viable management actions that can be taken in response to climate forecasts. As part of the modeling work, Federico linking the agronomic models with descriptive and prescriptive decision-making models. He derives estimations of the economic value of this information by comparing outcomes of decisions with and without climate information.

These approaches aim to identify realistic possibilities and ways for effective use of climate information in agricultural decision-making as well as to detect potential problems in the incorporation of such information.

Clark Knighton received a B.A. in Environmental Science and Spanish from the University of Virginia in 2003. She is currently an M.S. candidate in the Department of Geography at Penn State University, where she is working with Dr. Bill Easterling. As a member of the research team, Clark is developing a two-part conjoint analysis evaluation to assess farmers’ perceptions of seasonal climate forecasts and the influence of external factors on on-farm decisions.

Conjoint analysis is a method of research that evaluates the structure of decision makers’ preferences. It is an approach to understanding preferences in which a single decision (e.g. the purchase of a car) is broken down into a detailed investigation of the many factors considered when making that decision (e.g., price, color, gas mileage). Conjoint analysis is used to determine how such factors are traded-off or prioritized during the decision-making process by estimating the part-worth or relative importance attached to each factor (e.g., price may be three times more important than color or gas mileage when buying a car).

Within this project, Clark is implementing a conjoint analysis evaluation to investigate two major research questions:

(1) How do Argentine farmers trade-off climate forecast attributes (e.g., dissemination means, spatial resolution, lead-time, and accuracy) in judging the utility of such forecasts for on-farm management decisions, and

(2) How do Argentine farmers modify their aspiration levels for a future agricultural cycle given an external decision context (e.g., cereal and oilseed prices; input prices; economic, political, and social context; and climate conditions) that they expect to occur during that cycle. Here, “aspiration level” refers to the level of income that a farmer expects to obtain when planning his next agricultural cycle.  

This research aims to understand farmers’ perceptions of seasonal climate forecasts in order to foster greater compatibility between forecast design and user needs. Clark’s M.S. thesis is based upon this investigation as well as a detailed study of differences in perception that may link user needs to place.

Liliana Núñez is completing a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science at the University of Buenos Aires. Her thesis, supported by this project, involves the identification and description of wet and dry periods in the historical climate record of the Pampas. Liliana also heads the Agrometeorology Division of Argentina's Servicio Meteorológico Nacional.

Diego Ferraro (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Dr. Diego Ferraro has a post-doctoral fellowship at the Facultad de Agronomía (School of Agronomy) of the University of Buenos Aires.funded by Argentina's National Council for Scientific Research (CONICET, NSF's counterpart in Argentina). As part of his post-doctoral work, Diego is working with Emilio Satorre on some aspects of this project, particularly on the ecological impacts of various management alternatives.

Diego's work focuses on the use of ecological principles as a framework for sustainable agroecosystem development. He is interested on elucidating the influence of farm management, landscape structure and soil condition in agroecosystem sustainability. Dr. Ferraro is pursuing two main objectives in the context of this project:

Learn more about Diego's research at his WWW site...

Dr. Eva Maria Furrer is is a postdoc/visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Geophysical Statistics Project in Boulder, Colorado. Her recent research has centered around applications of diverse statistical methodologies to hydrological problems. Working with Rick Katz, Eva is currently studying weather generators taking into account climate variability associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomenon. Also, Eva will be involved in the probabilistic treatment of uncertainty.

In November 2006, Xavier González completed an undergraduate thesis required to obtain his B.S. in Industrial Engineering at the University of Buenos Aires. Xavier's B.S. thesis was titled "Modelación de la toma de decisiones en la producción agrícola: importancia de la información climática" [Modeling decision-making in agricultural production: The importance of climate information], and it focused on the agricultural management actions identified as "optimal" by various plausible objective functions. The thesis was directed by Dr. Carlos Laciana, another project participant.

Agustin Cavillioti is a last-year student at the School of Engineering of the University of Buenos Aires. His participation in the project involves the implementation of a preliminary agent-based model of deicsion in agricultural ecosystems in the Pampas.

Ignacio García, an Anthropology graduate student at the University of Buenos Aires was supported by the project to help develop a specification of an agent-based model of agricultural production in the Argentine Pampas. Ignacio is currently working on his doctoral degree on the topic of social networks and social capital.

Victoria recently completed her Master's thesis on decision-making topics. She joined the project for six months and performed a literature survey of learning models. Victoria is now pursuing her doctoral work in Anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires.