Soil moisture is a fundamental determinant of plant growth, but soil moisture measurements are rarely assimilated into grassland productivity models, in part because methods of incorporating such data into statistical and mechanistic yield models have not been adequately investigated. Therefore, our objectives were to (a) quantify statistical relationships between in situ soil moisture measurements and biomass yield on grasslands in Oklahoma and (b) develop a simple, mechanistic biomass-yield model for grasslands capable of assimilating in situ soil moisture data. Soil moisture measurements (as fraction of available water capacity, FAW) explained 60% of the variability in county-level wild hay yield reported by the National Agricultural [...]
