Delimitation of Agricultural Areas with Natural Constraints in Greece: Assessment of the Dryness Climatic Criterion Using Geostatistics

The Less Favored Areas (LFAs) scheme has existed in various forms since 1975 and it is a broad mechanism supporting rural development in agricultural areas with natural constraints (ANC). Within the programme period 2014–2020, the European Commission developed a common set of biophysical criteria (soil, climate, and terrain) to meet the requirement for a robust and harmonized approach of delimiting ANC throughout the EU Member States. Soil and terrain criteria can be derived directly from soil maps using geospatial analysis techniques based on the provided guidelines. However, the assessment of climatic criteria can be challenging especially in regions characterized by increased spatial variability and data scarcity. In this paper, the assessment of the dryness climatic criterion in a data-scarce region (Greece) as well as the challenges, limitations, and solutions are presented. Daily data-series from 140 meteorological stations for a 30-year reference period were analyzed and the spatial distribution of the precipitation and the potential evapotranspiration for each year were estimated in order to make the final assessment of the dryness criterion. Climate variability and the presence of trends were investigated as well. The obtained results indicated that most of the utilized agricultural area is affected by dryness due to a combination of low precipitation and high evapotranspiration rates. The extreme spatial variability especially in precipitation was also highlighted. An important temporal variability was observed as well, including indications of decreasing trends in precipitation and aridity index. Climate variability and possible trends should be investigated in more detail using longer time series in order to evaluate their impact in agricultural production