Empowering Cover Crop Decision Support with Visualization and Provenance Enhancement

Cover crops offer a range of agricultural and environmental benefits, such as reducing soil erosion, increasing carbon and enhancing water storage, increasing forage production, protecting soil nutrients, and so on. However, adoption of cover crop farming remains limited among Nebraska’s farmers. To promote awareness of the value of cover crop farming, we harness modern tools and technology and develop a new web-based tool capable of quantifying potential forage production, forage quality, and environmental benefits when planting cover crops, taking into account factors like climate, soil types, and seeding periods. Our tool incorporates the concept of data provenance to capture simulation configurations and results. This implementation can enhance data integrity and facilitate knowledge sharing within the scientific community, supporting further research and broader public benefits. The tool also includes reporting functions with visualizations illustrating distributions of potential forage, transpiration, nitrogen uptake, and more. Based on factors such as cover crop types, planting and termination dates, locations, and soil types, our tool provides valuable insights, enabling farmers to experiment with different cover crops on their land, ultimately leading to improved environmental outcomes for the broader Nebraska community.