InVEST: Crop Yield Model

Informing tradeoffs among land-use practices

The InVEST crop yield model produces yield and value estimates for 175
crops with no data requirements from the user, other than a land-use map
required by all terrestrial InVEST models.
The InVEST crop yield model helps evaluate trade-offs between
agricultural and other land-uses.
The crop model evaluates the impacts of land-use transitions and
intensified crop production by incorporating natural capital values into
economic estimations of crop yields. Conversion of natural habitats to Software Features
agricultural production sites impacts other ecosystem services that are key
to sustaining the economic benefits that agriculture provides to local Produces yield estimates for 175
communities. Intensive agricultural practices can add to pollution loads in different crops
water sources, often necessitating future costly water purification
methods. Overuse of water also threatens the supply available for Simulates four levels of yield
hydropower or other services. Still, crop production is essential to human intensification, for 100 different
well-being and livelihoods, and the crop model allows detailed examination climate zones
of the costs and benefits of this vital human enterprise.
Enables specific economic
analysis of 12 different crops:
InVEST Crop Yield Model: Key Questions
How would different arrangement or selection of cropping systems  Barley
compare to current systems in terms of total production? Could switching  Maize
crops yield higher economic returns or nutritional value?  Oil Palm
What are the impacts of crop intensification on ecosystem services? If  Potato
less land is used to produce equal amounts of food by increasing  Rapeseed
intensification, is the net result on ecosystem services production positive  Rice
or negative?  Rye
How can we evaluate different strategies for meeting increasing food  Soybean
demand while minimizing impact on ecosystem services?  Sugar beet
 Sugar Cane
 Sunflower
Utilizing Global Datasets for Agricultural Production  Wheat
Global datasets are included in the model to project current crop yield,
fertilizer and irrigation rates (shown below for maize). This data set can be
queried to produce actual estimates for yields, agricultural inputs, nutritional
value, and economic returns in areas where crops are currently grown.

MAIZE Percent Area Irrigated MAIZE N Application Rate (kg N/ha)

InVEST SOFTWARE
Crop Yield Model
Future Directions
We are currently testing this
model for accuracy in predicting
future crop yields under climate
change conditions. If the predictions
are robust to past climate and yield
trends, we will release an improved
version with the additional feature
to explore climate change
scenarios.
Spatial downscaling of the coarse
global crop model will broaden its
applicability and use in local land-
use decisions. We are working on
refining the current model, and are
looking for field-level (or better)
yield data across a wide
representation of soils,
topographies and climates.
Please let us know if you have, or
intend to take, such data and are
interested in collaborating with us.
Becky-Chaplin Kramer
bchaplin@stanford.edu
Lead Scientist
www.naturalcapitalproject.org
Predictive Yield Modeling
The crop model can
also predict yields
of 175 crops where
they are not
currently grown
based on climate
and income, with
additional features
to explore
intensification
Precipitation and temperature create
scenarios. Present- different ‘climate bins’ for each crop
day climate maps (at
5 min resolution) are included in the InVEST package. Four levels of yield
“intensification” can be simulated for 100 different climate zones (shown
above for rice), determined by precipitation and temperature (growing
degree days). Local nutrition production serves as a metric of well-being
that can be modeled for all food crops.
Quantifying Agricultural Inputs
For 12 staple crops (barley, maize, oil palm, potato, rapeseed, rice, rye,
soybean, sugar beet, sugar cane, sunflower, and wheat) and the same
climate zones, the crop model can also quantify intensification in terms of
fertilizer application rate and area of irrigation, projecting future yields for
those specific inputs. Economic and nutritional value can be calculated for
these 12 modeled staple crops.
Model Improvements
The current version of the crop model is a coarse global model driven
primarily by climate patterns, and optionally by management practices.
Thus, it does not capture the potentially substantial variation in
productivity that occurs across heterogeneous landscapes. For instance, if
a rocky hill slope and a fertile river valley share the same climate, the
model currently assigns the two areas the same crop yield. This can pose
challenges when prioritizing future habitat conversion, and determining
where farms are most productive and least destructive. Model
improvements (see future directions) will incorporate additional spatial
data to address these challenges.