Climate Change Impacts Assessment on Wine-Growing Bioclimatic Transition Areas

Abstract

Viticultural climatic indices were assessed for the evaluation of the meteorological variations in the requirements of wine cultivars. The applied bioclimatic indices have been widely used to provide an initial evaluation of climate change impacts on grapevine and to delineate wine regions and suitable areas for planting around the world. The study was carried out over a period of 16 years (from 2000 to 2015) in five Designation of Origin areas in Northwestern Spain located in the Eurosiberian region, the transition zone between the Eurosiberian and the Mediterranean areas, and in the Mediterranean area. In addition, the high-resolution meteorological dataset “Spain02” was applied to the bioclimatic indices for the period 1950–2095. To further assess the performance of “Spain02”, Taylor diagrams were elaborated for the different bioclimatic indices. A significant trend to an increase of the Winkler, Huglin, Night Cold Index and GSS Indices was detected in the North-western Spain, whereas slight negative trends for BBLI and GSP Indices were observed. To analyze future projections 2061–2095, data from the high-resolution dynamically downscaled daily climate simulations from EURO-CORDEX project were used. To further assess the performance of Spain02, Taylor diagrams were elaborated for the different bioclimatic indices. A trend to an increase of the Winkler, Huglin, Night Cold Index and GSP Indices was detected in Northwestern Spain, whereas slight negative trends for BBLI and GSP Indices were observed. Our results showed that climatic conditions in the study region could variate for the crop in the future, more for Mediterranean than Eurosiberian bioclimatic area. Due to an advance in the phenological events or the vintage data, more alcohol-fortified wines and variations in the acidity level of wines could be expected in Northwestern Spain, these processes being most noticeable in the Mediterranean area. The projections for the BBLI and GSP Indices will induce a decrease in the pressure of the mildew attacks incidence in the areas located at the Eurosiberian region and the nearest transition zones. Projections showed if the trend of temperature increase continues, some cultural practice variations should be conducted in order to preserve the grape cultivation suitability in the studied area.

The Water Needs of Grapevines in Central Poland

“…The expected further climate changes may cause an increase in water needs of the plants, also including grapevines [13,24,[55][56][57]. Therefore, some adaptation measures should already be taken today to protect plant crops against the effects of rising air temperature.…”

Fungal Phytopathogenic Spore First Assessment in an Olive Orchard of Northwestern Spain

“…The learning of the different ecological processes behavior of phytopathogenic fungus in the atmosphere of the crop is very important in regions where the cultivated area tend to the increase before the pressure of disease could be high. Mainly in areas located at the limit of the distribution of the olive cultivation, such as the study area where the boundary of the Eurosiberian and Mediterranean converge, and the effects of climate change could be more evident [62]. The impact caused by the imminent climate change in the future appearance of diseases in areas where they did not occur previously should be considered [58].…”

Climate change in a typical Apulian region for table grape production: spatialisation of bioclimatic indices, classification and Future Scenarios

“…In addition, other differences can be explained by the fact that WI considers the vine to stop its development below 10 °C, while the base temperature threshold for accumulation is likely cultivar specific and is possibly as low as 5 °C (García de Cortázar-Atauri et al, 2009). Furthermore, HI takes into account the average of maximum and the mean daily temperatures, and also introduces a coefficient K which takes into account the latitude and, therefore, the different durations of daylight (Piña-Rey et al, 2020).…”

“…In recent years, much research has dealt with evaluating climate change and its impact on viticulture, mainly with regard to wine grapes (Jones et al, 2010;Li and Zhou, 2014;Sgubin et al, 2019;Koufos et al, 2020;Piña-Rey et al, 2020;Santos et al, 2020).…”