Research Profile, N. Potter: Impact of Climate on Agriculture
Today Nicholas discussed his research on the impact of climate on agriculture. Specifically he explained how he was using the ‘matching’ package to create future variables for economic values for land parcels.
The future predictions for climate variables came from model predictions Nicholas already had access to. His economic variables were more difficult as they are the result of not only possible crops but regional variables. The matching package lets a researcher identify variables within the data set which are the most similar, in n dimensions, to the predicted variables. The future economic variable for that parcel is therefore the same as the past variable for the matching site.
Some specifics on this matching method, and references, can be found at this site: http://potterzot.com/research/rgroup.html#3
The .csv file and a text version of the R script can be found below: