Climate Change Impacts on Typical Mediterranean Crops and Evaluation of Adaptation Strategies to Cope With

Abstract

Climatic change is expected to have important impact on different economic sectors (e.g. agriculture, forestry, energy consumptions, tourism, etc.). Among human activities, agricultural sector is likely to be particularly exposed to climate change hazard, since animal and crop growth are largely determined by the weather conditions during their life cycles. As a consequence, understanding the potential impacts of climate change on the agriculture has become increasingly important and is of a main concern especially for the sustainability of agricultural system and for policy-making purposes. Climate change is likely to affect agricultural systems very differently in various parts of the world. In the Mediterranean area particular attention should be devoted to climate change impact and adaptation assessments on typical Mediterranean crops like grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.), durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subs. durum Desf.) and olive (Olea europaea L.), since the projected global warming may seriously compromise the fragile equilibrium between climate and crops. In this study the impacts on durum wheat and grapevine yields, and olive suitable cultivation area were investigated for two time slices under A1B SRES scenario, at first. Then, some adaptation strategies to cope with these impacts were explored. The results indicated that projected higher temperatures resulted in a general advance of phenological stages with respect to the baseline and in a shorter inter-phase time for both durum wheat and grapevine. Despite the general decrease of time for biomass accumulation, durum wheat took advantage of the positive effect of higher CO₂ concentration, while grapevine resulted more vulnerable to warmer and drier future climate. Adaptation options, aiming at avoiding extremely high temperatures during sensible phases and prolonging the duration of the reproductive stage, resulted as positive strategies to alleviate negative impacts or exploit possible beneficial effects of a changing climate. Finally, the rising temperature will cause a northward and eastward shift of the olive tree suitable area.