Investor Presentaiton
Climate 2020, 8, 46
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Belgorod region
Figure 1. The location of the study region in relation to the Russia.
The HTC is one of the indicators of agricultural growth in different parts of the world (e.g., [14,24–26]).
As an important agro-climatic indicator that defines the resource and energy demands of crops, the
period when the daily mean temperature greater than 10 °C is a viable baseline because it describes the
period of active vegetation for a majority of plants, including sugar beets. Changes or spatial variations in
the HTC are a function of changes or spatial variations in the daily mean temperature and/or precipitation
during the period with temperatures above 10 °C. Crops also have a maximum temperature limit for
productivity, which could also be tested. For sugar beet in the Belgorod region, this is 40 °C, which is an
extremely rare occurrence here.
Meteorological data were also used to calculate the two additional climatic indexes connected
to agricultural productivity such as the BCP (see [14] or [24-26]) index and the moisture index (Cp).
The moisture index is actually part of the calculation of the BCP (2a). For this reason, we use the BCP
baseline for our region (reference [27]), and this baseline can be found in [14]. BCP is a function of
complex meteorological factors that determine the potential growth and development for plants in
order to evaluate the agricultural productivity of climate. This index empirically takes into account the
difference between the surface temperature and dew point, or the humidity deficit.
According to references [14,24], the maximum biological productivity is determined by the total
influence of heat, moisture, and soil fertility. For a particular region with similar soil conditions, the
BCP index can be reduced to a function of heat and moisture expressed as a ratio. In particular, the
BCP is the ratio of the sum of the average daily temperatures over the period of active vegetation (°C)
to the analogous sum for a reference region (°C), multiplied by the coefficient reflecting the influence
of moisture (moisture index) on agricultural yield. The formulae are:
BCP = C₁(CH) (ΣT*) (ΣTbase)¯¹
Cp(CH) = (0.5 Px + Pm) (0.18 ΣT*)-1
(2a)
(2b)
where BCP is the relative bioclimatic potential, Cp (CH) is the moisture index (reference [17]), ΣT* is the
same as in reference [14,17], ΣTbase is the base sum of the average daily temperatures for the period
of active vegetation for this region (19.0 °C). In Equation (2b), Px is the total precipitation during theView entire presentation