AgResearch, Lincoln Research Centre, Private Bag 4749, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Mohsin Media Designer, Wellington, New Zealand.
PLoS One. 2023 Jun 2;18(6):e0286723. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286723. eCollection 2023.
Many pastoral farmers are searching for ways to lower the carbon emission footprint that is generated by livestock. Planting trees on the farm is currently a popular option for farmers to offset their emissions yet requires knowledge of suitable tree species and locations to plant them. This paper describes a decision-support tool aimed at helping farmers to create and visualise different planting designs while balancing the objectives of sequestering carbon and maintaining farm profitability. We take an innovative approach by combining virtual reality technology with biophysical models to create an environment where the user can actively create virtual future farm scenarios. Through the creation process, the user can simultaneously balance multiple objectives including farm aesthetics, economic returns, business and environmental ambitions, and carbon emissions (net) balance. For this proof-of-concept study, we incorporate virtual reality technology in Unreal Engine, environmental and financial data, and high-resolution spatial layers from an operational 400-hectare livestock farm in New Zealand.
许多牧民正在寻找降低牲畜产生的碳排放足迹的方法。在农场植树是目前农民减排的一种流行选择，但需要了解适合种植的树种和位置。本文描述了一种决策支持工具，旨在帮助农民在平衡固碳和维持农场盈利能力的目标的同时，创建和可视化不同的种植设计。我们采用了一种创新的方法，将虚拟现实技术与生物物理模型相结合，创建了一个用户可以积极创建虚拟未来农场场景的环境。通过创建过程，用户可以同时平衡多个目标，包括农场美学、经济回报、商业和环境抱负以及碳排放（净）平衡。对于这项概念验证研究，我们在虚幻引擎中结合了虚拟现实技术、环境和财务数据以及新西兰一个运营中的 400 公顷牲畜农场的高分辨率空间层。
