Farmers increasingly need to adjust their management practices to accommodate unexpected events such as drought, and preserve the sustainability of their production. This flexibility requires background knowledge about where and when freedom of choice can be exercised. Here, we designed an analysis framework for grassland-based farming systems in mountainous and less-favored areas. An expert-based discrimination tree characterizes organizational flexibility by determining the range of possible types of grassland use under various topographic and farming constraints such as suitability for mechanization, and ease of access to a field. A set of time windows evaluates the timing flexibility in grassland use, each associated with a combination of a grassland community type and a type of grassland use. Our results show that the outputs of the discrimination tree match for 139 of 165 grassland fields, by comparison with field data obtained in the French Aubrac region. For a particular type of grassland use, the set of time windows proves that timing flexibility in grassland use between grassland community types can increase by 15 days over a 37-day time range. When applying the two components of the analysis framework to a farm case, it shows that 24% of the farm area offers organizational flexibility, with several possibilities for grassland use. Timing flexibility for bringing forward or delaying the use of the grassland fields is unused in the farm. Most of the dates of grassland first use are similar irrespective of the diversity of grassland communities. The application of the analysis framework offers a sound evaluation of the potential flexibility to establish where and when it is possible to adjust management practices to cope with unexpected events. It can also be helpful in setting up coherent alternatives to the observed management strategies that can then be expanded in dynamic simulation models enabling deeper analysis.

中文翻译：

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表征草地使用中的潜在灵活性。应用于法国Aubrac地区

农民越来越需要调整管理方式，以适应干旱等突发事件，并保持其生产的可持续性。这种灵活性要求您在何时何地可以行使选择自由的背景知识。在这里，我们为山区和欠佳地区的草地农业系统设计了一个分析框架。基于专家的判别树通过确定各种地形和耕作约束（例如机械化的适合性和进入田地的便利性）下可能使用的草地类型的范围来表征组织的灵活性。一组时间窗口评估了草地使用中的时间灵活性，每个时间窗口都与草地群落类型和草地使用类型的组合相关联。我们的结果表明，与法国Aubrac地区获得的田间数据进行比较，判别树的输出与165个草地田地中的139个匹配。对于特定类型的草地使用，一组时间窗证明，在草地群落类型之间的草地使用时间安排灵活性可以在37天的时间范围内增加15天。将分析框架的两个组件应用于一个农场案例时，它表明24％的农场面积具有组织上的灵活性，并为草地使用提供了多种可能性。在农场中没有用于提前或延迟使用草地的时间灵活性。无论草原群落的多样性如何，大多数草原首次使用的日期都是相似的。分析框架的应用程序对可能的灵活性进行了合理的评估，以确定可以在何时何地调整管理实践以应对突发事件。它对于设置观察到的管理策略的连贯替代方案也很有帮助，然后可以在动态仿真模型中对其进行扩展以实现更深入的分析。