No abstract

In recent decades, agriculture has faced the fundamental challenge of needing to increase food production and quality in order to meet the requirements of a growing global population. Similarly, viticulture has also been undergoing change. Several countries are reducing their vineyard areas, and several others are increasing them. In addition, viticulture is moving towards higher altitudes and latitudes due to climate change. Furthermore, global warming is also exacerbating the incidence of fungal diseases in vineyards, forcing farmers to apply agrochemicals to preserve production yields and quality. The repeated application of copper (Cu)-based fungicides in conventional and organic farming has caused a stepwise accumulation of Cu in vineyard soils, posing environmental and toxicological threats. High Cu concentrations in soils can have multiple impacts on agricultural systems. In fact, it can (i) alter the chemical-physical properties of soils, thus compromising their fertility; (ii) induce toxicity phenomena in plants, producing detrimental effects on growth and productivity; and (iii) affect the microbial biodiversity of soils, thereby influencing some microbial-driven soil processes. However, several indirect (e.g., management of rhizosphere processes through intercropping and/or fertilization strategies) and direct (e.g., exploitation of vine resistant genotypes) strategies have been proposed to restrain Cu accumulation in soils. Furthermore, the application of precision and smart viticulture paradigms and their related technologies could allow a timely, localized and balanced distribution of agrochemicals to achieve the required goals. The present review highlights the necessity of applying multidisciplinary approaches to meet the requisites of sustainability demanded of modern viticulture.

We present a multivariate hierarchical space-time model to describe the joint series of monthly extreme temperatures and amounts of rainfall. Data are available for 360 monitoring stations over 60 years, with missing data affecting almost all series. Model components account for spatiotemporal dependence with annual cycles, dependence on covariates and between responses. The very large amount of data is tackled modeling the spatio-temporal dependence by the nearest neighbor Gaussian process. Response multivariate dependencies are described using the linear model of coregionalization, while annual cycles are assessed by a circular representation of time. The proposed approach allows imputation of missing values and easy interpolation of climate surfaces at the national level. The motivation behind is the characterization of the so called ecoregions over the Italian territory. Ecoregions delineate broad and discrete ecologically homogeneous areas of similar potential as regards the climate, physiography, hydrography, vegetation and wildlife, and provide a geographic framework for interpreting ecological processes, disturbance regimes, vegetation patterns and dynamics. To now, the two main Italian macro-ecoregions are hierarchically arranged into 35 zones. The current climatic characterization of Italian ecoregions is based on data and bioclimatic indices for the period 1955-1985 and requires an appropriate update.

Climate change is expected to threaten endemic plants in the Alps. In this context, the factors that may modulate species responses are rarely investigated at a local scale. We analyzed eight alpine narrow endemics of the Dolomites (southeastern Alps) under different predicted climate change scenarios at fine spatial resolutions. We tested possible differences in elevation, topographic heterogeneity and velocity of climate change among areas of gained, lost, or stable climatic habitat. The negative impact of climate change ranged from moderate to severe, depending on scenario and species. Generally, range loss occurred at the lowest elevations, while gained and stable areas were located at highest elevations. For six of the species, climate change velocity had higher values in stable and gained areas than in lost ones. Our findings support the role of topographic heterogeneity in maintaining climatic microrefugia, however, the peculiar topography of the Dolomites, characterized by high altitude plateaus, resulted in high climate change velocity in areas of projected future climatic suitability. Our study supports the usefulness of multiple predictors of spatio-temporal range dynamics for regional climate-adapted management and eventual assisted colonization planning to not overlook or overestimate the potential impact of climate change locally.