Designing profitable and climate-smart farms using virtual reality

making, especially when consensus amongst people or compromise across tradeoffs is sort. There is also an ongoing trend to integrate existing virtual globe solutions such as Google Earth or Cesium with development platforms like UE [44]. Therefore, given its potentially valuable role and the advancements in the technology, we expect the development of digital twins (i.e., accurate 3D geovisulaisation) will become more common in the future. Conclusions Planting trees on farms is an effective, and potentially profitable, way of lowering the carbon footprint of a farm enterprise. However, transitioning significant, or complete, portions of a farm into forestry has flow-on effects on farm profitability, landscape aesthetics and in many instances, rural communities as a whole. Therefore, on-farm planting strategies require careful selection of site and species to achieve the right balance across several competing factors. We have developed a decision support mechanism using VR technology that draws together science data and user knowledge into a farm planning process that we believe will accelerate the transition of farming landscapes to a sustainable and low-carbon future. The VR application we have developed supports a realistic digital version of a farm that in turn helps elucidate the user’s tacit knowledge into strategic planning without the need for sophisticated, and computer intensive models. Under new carbon regulations in New Zealand, agricultural activities will strongly incenti-

vise sheep and beef farmers to plant trees. While on first appearance this seems to be a rela- tively simple planning procedure, there remains confusion around the New Zealand ETS both at a farm and regional level. In our application we have enabled, either formally or informally, a diverse and complex combination of quantitative and qualitative factors (e.g., science data, spatial arrangement of amenities, cultural and aesthetic values, and personal connectivity) to be considered into the planning process. This project demonstrates that scientific data can be combined with VR to provide more holistic farm-scale assessments compared with the current suite of farm support tools. In proving this concept, we have identified where additional work would improve the accu- racy of the underpinning science data (e.g., GHG, financial and carbon sequestration), and increase the relevance of our approach to a wider set of considerations within the broader car- bon-neutrality discussion. Future work might include a greater diversity of farms and farming situations, greater diversity of tree species, including a wider selection of native species, and an assessment of the user experience using VR applications compared with more traditional deci- sion support tools. We have also identified a wider range of challenges to which our VR tech- nology approach might be applied, such as on-farm biodiversity conservation and enhancement, mitigating contaminant (e.g., nutrient, microbe, and sediment) losses and new on-farm business development opportunities. Supporting information

S1 Table. Carbon sequestration and establishment costs for the different tree species and carbon emissions and profitability for the different pasture production classes. (XLSX) Acknowledgments The authors thank the owners of the land for enabling us to use their property as a pilot farm, and Ali Jansen for his contribution to the development of the virtual reality application. PLOS ONE Designing profitable and climate-smart farms using virtual reality PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286723 June 2, 2023 12 / 16