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Report and Presentation

The assignment is to profile the impact of weather on yields for a Saskatchewan Rural Municipality (RM). You will be assigned the same RM that you worked with in Module 5. You want to show the relationship between weather and yields, assuming your audience is a group of producers within that RM. You will do this in three ways: a workbook that you can share, a five-page report, and a five-minute presentation.

The data

There are five files that might be helpful for this assignment:

  • rm_yields_1960_2025.csv – yields for six crops in every RM, 1960 to 2025. One row per RM-year-crop.
  • rm_weather_1960_2025.csv – growing-season weather for every RM over the same years, with that RM’s yields attached. One row per RM-year.
  • sask_rms.geojson – the boundaries of all 296 RMs.
  • aci_crop_classes.csv – what each number in the crop inventory raster means.
  • aci_2025_rm<number>_<name>.tif – the 2025 Annual Crop Inventory clipped to your RM, at 30 m. On Canvas with your assignment.

What the report/presentation should cover

The main part of your report should highlight the relationship between weather and crop yields in your RM. But first you want to provide context on what grows in the RM and how yields have changed over time.

In particular, each report/presentation should include:

  1. A map of the RM and a description of what is grown in it, including the area in the major crops and the share of the RM that is cropped at all. This would be a raster file taken from the 2025 Annual Crop Inventory, clipped to your RM. Note this is just one year of data. From this map you can determine the two most important crops in the RM.

  2. Using the 1960-2025 yield file: how have yields in your RM changed, and how does it compare with the province? Focus on the two major crops in your RM. A good answer separates the long-run trend from year-to-year variation, identifies the worst years, and says something about reliability as well as level – the highest-yielding crop and the most dependable one are often not the same.

  3. Using the weather file: what is the relationship between growing-season weather and yield in your RM, and has the climate itself changed over the 66 years?

You can start by plotting the weather variables and yields over time, and then look at the correlation between weather and yield. You will need to decide how to handle the long-run trend in yields.

Ultimately, you should use a regression to answer how weather has impacted yields of the two most important crops in the RM. Describe what your coefficients mean and what they imply about the relationship between weather and yields. You should also discuss the limitations of your analysis, including what you cannot say about the relationship between weather and yields.

To be clear, do not write the report with headings “Question 1”, “Question 2”, etc. Instead, write it as something that you could give to your audience as a short, but polished, report.

Deliverables

A workbook. An .xlsx file holding the numbers behind your report. This file doesn’t have to include the regression analysis above, but it should hold the yield and weather data. The idea is that you could share this workbook with a producer who would want to take a closer look at the numbers behind your report. Make sure it is formatted and labelled so that someone who is just coming to the data with little knowledge of Excel would be able to understand your workbook.

A report, approximately 5 pages including figures. The structure of a report covers a reasonable structure for the report.

A presentation, roughly five minutes and five slides. 35  Presentations describes a good design and structure for the presentation. You should record this presentation and submit it as a video file. This can be done on zoom with screen share and recording – though other software would work as well. Five slides will not hold everything above, and they are not meant to. Choose the findings that matter most to a producer in your RM and leave the rest in the report and the workbook.

To be clear, the files to upload include:

  1. The workbook, as an .xlsx file.
  2. The report, as a .pdf file.
  3. The presentation, as a .mp4 file.
  4. Presentation slides
  5. Any code you used to create the figures and analysis.

What is being marked

The rubric for the assignment is:

  • 10% Excel workbook
  • 50% Report
  • 40% Presentation

Each will be graded both on the quality of the analysis and the quality of the communication.