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The Forecast and Assessment of Cropping SysTemS (FACTS) provides information to assist decision-making since 2016.

What We Do

We provide decision support tools to benchmark weather and soil conditions, determine planting and harvesting dates, maturity choices and N rates.  

  • weather benchmark 
  • soil N mineralization 
  • soil moisture
  • late spring nitrate test
  • soybean planting
  • corn drydown  

Why We Do It

  • To provide actionable information to aid decision-making
  • To understand crop-limiting factors at scale, including water stress (too dry or too wet) and nitrogen supply 
  • To improve the science behind predictive tools 

How We Do It

The FACTS web platform will continue to evolve in line with stakeholders’ needs. To develop the tools, we combine public data (soils, weather), field experiment data, process-based simulation modeling (APSIM), and advanced analytics (ArcGIS, Python, R, AI). 

 

Sponsors

FACTS is an ongoing project developed to forecast and evaluate in real time soil-crop dynamics across fields and regions. Tools and predictions will be frequently updated as new information becomes available. The project investigators and Iowa State University are not responsible for extrapolations made by individuals. Information from this website can be used for presentations without further permission if used in its entirety and credit is given to the Iowa State University FACTS project. Information from this website cannot be used in publications or other model improvement activities without prior permission of the project investigators.