<p>I am almost done creating an app that allows people to create a planting calendar based on garden journals created by people who live within a certain radius of a user. In those garden journals people record how many days it took to reach maturity/harvest among many other things. The whole idea behind this planting calendar app is that people who live near each other share the same average monthly temperature and rainfall with each other. Not only that but they will often also share the same soil type and soil pH. In other words, if person A finished a garden journal about tomato variety X and then determined that planting the variety on date X takes 80 days, then person B living say 10 miles (16 km) away will likely be able to harvest after a roughly similar amount of days if he starts growing the variety on the same date as person A did.</p>
<p>My question is: <strong>At what distance will the (micro) climate be so different from the climate of person A that the results of the garden journal of person A will no longer be useful for person B?</strong></p>
<p>I've looked at the average temperatures of two  inland points in the Netherlands and I have determined that if those points are about 50 km apart from each other they hardly differ. But if I compare a location near the sea with a location 50 km inland they do differ by a few degrees. This difference becomes significant after a distance of 20 km inland.</p>
<p>This is only the Netherlands, perhaps there are places in the world where larger swathes of land share the same average monthly temperatures.</p>
<p>I am trying to determine what the maximum radius should be that I should offer to my web application users. Right now the maximum is set to 500 km or 500 miles. But I think this may be too much and not useful to anyone. However I could be mistaken.</p>
<p>I would like to hear your opinion about what the maximum should be.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-01T00:03:35.667Z
how can a climate change after a mere 2km distance? My lowest radius is 5km. The reason for this is privacy concerns for my users. Can you give me an example? what volcanic island are you talking about?
Maurice
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-01T00:08:17.933Z
ok i can imagine that person A living on top of a mountain will have little use of any garden journal made by person B at the base of the mountain. But i think the majority of people do not live in steep valley's or high mountains, they live in urban areas on flat terrain. Your comment made me think though, perhaps i should lower the lowerbound to 2 km instead of 5. Thank you
Maurice
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-01T00:35:43.453Z
yes i can imagine things like humidity to be allot higher in a forest then on the meadow's, that might also slightly affect how fast or slow a plant grows. Thank you for your insights @ebv
Maurice
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-01T01:02:20.570Z
You might need to include an altitude factor; that would be the most significant element that would make a difference at short (horizontal) distances.
Ken Fabian
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-01T02:56:18.550Z
@Maurice: There are plenty of people living on non-flat terrain.  In the western US, I can hike from temperate (if somewhat dry) to alpine climate in a day, and could do the same when I lived in Switzerland.  Also, people living in urban areas would seem to have little use for anything more that a window box or two ln their apartment .
jamesqf
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-01T05:27:36.083Z
A simple distance approach may be applicable to large swathes of flat land with uniform soil types, but climate & growing conditions can be complicated by mountain ranges, even short height ones. Ranges on the western side of land masses will have a high rainfall zone on the western (coastal) side & a rain shadow zone on the eastern (inland) side. Even small height ranges on the eastern side of a land mass will produce climate differences between coastal & inland regions adjacent to the range. Compare the inland & coastal conditions for the Appalachian & Rocky Mountain regions.
Fred
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-01T13:23:15.817Z
ok if i lower the minimum allowed radius to 1 km then surely any garden journals within such a range must have been created under a similar climate right? For most people that is.
Maurice
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-03T08:06:22.693Z
Problem One: Climate can differ rather strong over a few dozen kilometers. E.g. Jalta has an almost subtropical climate (with some snow, yes) while the plateau right north to it has a much harsher, colder climate (due to elevation and prevailing winds from central Ukraine). Problem Two: Soil conditions can differ very strong over only a few hundred meters. So it is very naive to assume that spatial closeness leads to similar harvests.
Erik
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-03T16:39:11.883Z
@Erik, people will be able to filter the garden journals by soiltype, and i said nothing about the app predicting similar harvests, through the garden journals it can generate planting calendars based on the sow date and it also shows how long it took the previous grow season to reach maturity according to the garden journals that fall within the radius
Maurice
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-03T16:44:04.993Z
also, about your 'hundred meter claim' here in the netherlands pretty much all of the province of Groningen has clay soil. It stretches many km wide. So yes there may be places where you have different soiltypes close to each other but thats  not everywhere the case.
Maurice
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-10T12:13:58.967Z
Regarding the comment above about most people living in urban areas rather than mountain valleys: this is true, but urban areas also have a very localised micro-climate. And the slope of the terrain is very important outside the tropics: a gentle slope towards the sun is much better for the garden than a slope away. This may not be much of an issue in the Netherlands, but in the UK 100m can make a huge difference.
M Juckes
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-01-11T10:58:07.897Z
Instead of dividing your map into cells of the same radius, what you could do is a [Voronoi diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram). (It will also help as your users will likely not be distributed evenly.) Then you could feed each user with the data from all adjacent cells, with a weight on each cell depending on the distance between their respective points.
Jean-Marie Prival
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-01-11T13:59:11.753Z
cool suggestion @Jean-MariePrival, i've never heard of the Voronoi diagram before. I am not dividing the map into cells of the same radius. Instead I am using spatial queries with mysql. I let the mysql database fetch all the garden journals that have coordinates that fall within a certain radius from the users location. The user decides how large this radius is.
Maurice
<meteorology><climate><climate-models>
At what distance from a location does the average monthly climate significantly start to differ?
Maurice
# At what distance from a location does the average monthly climate significantly start to differ?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-01-31)

I am almost done creating an app that allows people to create a planting calendar based on garden journals created by people who live within a certain radius of a user. In those garden journals people record how many days it took to reach maturity/harvest among many other things. The whole idea behind this planting calendar app is that people who live near each other share the same average monthly temperature and rainfall with each other. Not only that but they will often also share the same soil type and soil pH. In other words, if person A finished a garden journal about tomato variety X and then determined that planting the variety on date X takes 80 days, then person B living say 10 miles (16 km) away will likely be able to harvest after a roughly similar amount of days if he starts growing the variety on the same date as person A did.

My question is: **At what distance will the (micro) climate be so different from the climate of person A that the results of the garden journal of person A will no longer be useful for person B?**

I've looked at the average temperatures of two inland points in the Netherlands and I have determined that if those points are about 50 km apart from each other they hardly differ. But if I compare a location near the sea with a location 50 km inland they do differ by a few degrees. This difference becomes significant after a distance of 20 km inland.

This is only the Netherlands, perhaps there are places in the world where larger swathes of land share the same average monthly temperatures.

I am trying to determine what the maximum radius should be that I should offer to my web application users. Right now the maximum is set to 500 km or 500 miles. But I think this may be too much and not useful to anyone. However I could be mistaken.

I would like to hear your opinion about what the maximum should be.

**Tags:** meteorology, climate, climate-models

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: how can a climate change after a mere 2km distance? My lowest radius is 5km. The reason for this is privacy concerns for my users. Can you give me an example? what volcanic island are you talking about?  
> **username_0**: ok i can imagine that person A living on top of a mountain will have little use of any garden journal made by person B at the base of the mountain. But i think the majority of people do not live in steep valley's or high mountains, they live in urban areas on flat terrain. Your comment made me think though, perhaps i should lower the lowerbound to 2 km instead of 5. Thank you  
> **username_0**: yes i can imagine things like humidity to be allot higher in a forest then on the meadow's, that might also slightly affect how fast or slow a plant grows. Thank you for your insights @ebv  
> **username_1**: You might need to include an altitude factor; that would be the most significant element that would make a difference at short (horizontal) distances.  
> **username_2**: @username_0: There are plenty of people living on non-flat terrain.  In the western US, I can hike from temperate (if somewhat dry) to alpine climate in a day, and could do the same when I lived in Switzerland.  Also, people living in urban areas would seem to have little use for anything more that a window box or two ln their apartment .  
> **username_3**: A simple distance approach may be applicable to large swathes of flat land with uniform soil types, but climate & growing conditions can be complicated by mountain ranges, even short height ones. Ranges on the western side of land masses will have a high rainfall zone on the western (coastal) side & a rain shadow zone on the eastern (inland) side. Even small height ranges on the eastern side of a land mass will produce climate differences between coastal & inland regions adjacent to the range. Compare the inland & coastal conditions for the Appalachian & Rocky Mountain regions.  
> **username_0**: ok if i lower the minimum allowed radius to 1 km then surely any garden journals within such a range must have been created under a similar climate right? For most people that is.  
> **username_4**: Problem One: Climate can differ rather strong over a few dozen kilometers. E.g. Jalta has an almost subtropical climate (with some snow, yes) while the plateau right north to it has a much harsher, colder climate (due to elevation and prevailing winds from central Ukraine). Problem Two: Soil conditions can differ very strong over only a few hundred meters. So it is very naive to assume that spatial closeness leads to similar harvests.  
> **username_0**: @username_4, people will be able to filter the garden journals by soiltype, and i said nothing about the app predicting similar harvests, through the garden journals it can generate planting calendars based on the sow date and it also shows how long it took the previous grow season to reach maturity according to the garden journals that fall within the radius  
> **username_0**: also, about your 'hundred meter claim' here in the netherlands pretty much all of the province of Groningen has clay soil. It stretches many km wide. So yes there may be places where you have different soiltypes close to each other but thats  not everywhere the case.  
> **username_5**: Regarding the comment above about most people living in urban areas rather than mountain valleys: this is true, but urban areas also have a very localised micro-climate. And the slope of the terrain is very important outside the tropics: a gentle slope towards the sun is much better for the garden than a slope away. This may not be much of an issue in the Netherlands, but in the UK 100m can make a huge difference.  
> **username_6**: Instead of dividing your map into cells of the same radius, what you could do is a [Voronoi diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram). (It will also help as your users will likely not be distributed evenly.) Then you could feed each user with the data from all adjacent cells, with a weight on each cell depending on the distance between their respective points.  
> **username_0**: cool suggestion @username_6, i've never heard of the Voronoi diagram before. I am not dividing the map into cells of the same radius. Instead I am using spatial queries with mysql. I let the mysql database fetch all the garden journals that have coordinates that fall within a certain radius from the users location. The user decides how large this radius is.  

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