Nutrient Tracking Tool – Apex (NTT-APEX).

The Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) is composed of a user friendly web interface to easily load the Agricultural Policy Extender (APEX) model with corporate data including: climate, soils and agronomic information. There have been several papers and oral/poster presentations on NTT functionality; however, the focus of this poster is to highlight the use of behind the scenes "web-services" to provision the APEX model with prerequisite data to run the APEX model. The NTT interface allows users to select farm or field scale areas of interest (AOI).  From those polygons, web-services make automated data calls to the Web Soil Survey (WSS) and High Resolution Climate Data (HRCS) repositories managed by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), respectively.  When NTT is fully parameterized and calibrated, field specific nutrient management conditions and conservation practices may be selected or added prior to conducting a baseline vs. alternative management resource analysis and assessment.

 Future development will focus on the creation of both the web-service and the corporate agronomic data set, Land Management Operations Database (LMOD), for the NRCS.

 The NTT model has long been viewed as a resource analysis model and a robust user interface to APEX. Although this is accurate, one of the significant advancements has been its ability to easily and rigorously provision the APEX model.  The web services within NTT were built with an Object Modeling System (OMS) understanding.  These services may well have broader application with other models and further corporate data sets.