Putting It All Together: Functionality of the Global Yield Gap Atlas Website.

Within the Global Yield Gap Atlas initiative solid estimates of crop yield gaps are generated at different spatial levels. These levels ranges from local cropping systems at site level via weather stations to climate zones and countries. At each spatial level data are available on simulated potential and water-limited yields that can be compared with actual yield to evaluate the yield gap and thus possible room for production increases. To analyse and disseminate these results an information infrastructure was designed and built. It includes a relational database on top of which an advanced web-based interface (GYGA viewer) has been constructed to visualise and analyse data in a spatial and temporal manner. This way the GYGA viewer provides instant access to yield gap data for different continents. Moreover key characteristics on climate zones, national crop production, weather stations, dominant soils and cropping systems are made available. Users can conduct custom searches and view results in a range of intuitive and easy to apply configurations. Transparent presentation of yield gap data are of major importance and is realized by showing underpinning data and offering drill down functionality. This function supports the user to analyze aggregated results by tracing back to basic calculation units that are a combination of weather station, cropping system and soil (see figure below). The GYGA viewer is based on a client-server architecture and is developed in the Rich Internet Application environment Adobe Flex.