Designing profitable and climate-smart farms using virtual reality

This paper focuses on the technical development of the application, beginning with a description of the methods we used to model farm profits and carbon emissions. The next sec- tion describes the study site and the technical modelling that we used to predict carbon emis- sions and profitability. The next section also describes the method we used to develop the VR environment and to visualise tree plantings and the impact of the planting regime on farm per- formance (carbon, profitability). We then present the outcomes delivered by the VR applica- tion and provide some reflections about how the tool might support more interactivity between users and scientific data used for farm design and to achieve carbon targets. Study site and methods Study site The VR tool was developed using a 400-ha sheep and beef farm located on Banks Peninsula, Canterbury, New Zealand (Fig 1). In choosing a pilot farm we looked for an operating live- stock farm with a diverse terrain that had the potential for tree planting. We also searched for a location that had high amenity value, in this case unabated views of the Pacific Ocean and access to recreational sites. At the time this study was initiated, the farm owners were embark- ing on a re-forestation programme that aimed to expand the area in native trees at the cost of the current pastoral land. The farm’s terrain was characterised as mixed rolling downlands and steep gullies covered pre- dominantly in pasture. There were small areas of exotic pine (Pinus radiata) and regenerating

native forest (including Prumnopitys taxifolia and Podocarpus totara). The farm is bordered on three sides by livestock farms, while the southern boader met the Pacific Ocean. The farm Fig 1. Location of the study site. (A) Location of the farm on the South Island of New Zealand, (B) Farm boundaries and the land cover map. Light green represents beef and sheep pasture, dark green represents native forest and brown represents Pine trees. (C) Elevation map from the sea level to 690m. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286723.g001 PLOS ONE Designing profitable and climate-smart farms using virtual reality PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286723 June 2, 2023 3 / 16