LIFE-ADVICLIM PROJECT: ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Within the LIFE-ADVICLIM project, the aim of action C1 is monitoring the environmental impact of the project measures concerning adaptation to climate change and mitigation of greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG) at a regional scale. In general, the viticultural sector, as well as agriculture, is associated with a high use of natural resources like fossil energy, mineral fertilizers and the risk for soil degradation, but also with high output volumes of environmentally problematic substances like GHG emissions, pesticides, fertilizers and other by-products. Also, the type of land use has considerable effects on the environment. Therefore, the whole production chain in viticulture has environmental impacts in many ways. Viticultural cultivation practices are adapted to site specific characteristics and also some traditional reasons are responsible for differences among the winegrowing regions. But viticultural cultivation practices have also to some extend aligned, with a decrease of traditional cultivation forms, as a result of a more intense mechanisation and globalisation of the industry. Currently, the winegrowing regions share also similar environmental issues and risks like nitrate and pesticide pollution or loss of biodiversity.Furthermore, the environmental conditions are changing due to the ongoing climate change and also the production methods are adapted due to technical developments and a better knowledge of the whole agricultural system. Although widely discussed, environmental issues receive too little attention in this dynamic situation. Technical developments primarily aim to reduce production costs, to increase resilience, to lessen external dependencies and are often combined with an increase of CO2 emissions because of an increased use of fossil fuel.One of the ADVILCIM outcomes are experiences with small scale temperature networks and the development of modelling skills of temperature distributions within growing regions, supplemented with approaches to model the dynamic structures of wineries. This much more detailed environmental monitoring increases knowledge and paves the way for further applications regarding data acquisition and analysis in the field of digitalisation and “smart agriculture” which could also help to reduce the environmental impact in future