ABSTRACT
Soils have varying production capacities for a specic plant or sequence of plants under dened management strategies. The production capacity or “productivity” can be quantied as a mathematical function of a soil’s ability to sufciently sustain plant growth and development. The result of this function is a productivity index
24.1 Executive Summary ...................................................................................... 425 24.2 Introduction .................................................................................................. 426
24.2.1 Data Sources Used in Exercise ......................................................... 426 24.2.2 Productivity Index ............................................................................ 427
24.3 Using the SPIC .............................................................................................. 428 24.3.1 Important Tips for Using the PI Workbook ...................................... 428 24.3.2 Retrieving Data from Web Soil Survey and Populating SPIC ......... 429
24.4 Using the BESS Model to Calculate Energy Gains or Losses ..................... 434 24.5 Using ARCGIS™ to Create Field-Scale Maps .............................................. 437 24.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 441 Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................442 References ..............................................................................................................442
