The impacts of the climate change on Tuscan viticulture: qualities, areas and landscapes

Viticulture is a traditional and important activity of Tuscan agriculture, whose effects are being reflected notonly on the income of farmers, but as well on tourism sector, either directly, by adding value to the global offer of products and services available in the region, and indirectly by contributing to the slow shaping process that made unique the Tuscan landscape. Understanding the impacts of climate change in viticulture is therefore essential, especially in those areas producing high quality wines. In this work we set an operational framework to investigate climate change impact on viticulture in Tuscany (central Italy) whose viticulture relies on producing high quality wines to compete in a global market. The framework included i) a statistical downscaling of a General Circulation Model (GCM) outputs for the period 1975-2100 on a local scale; (ii) the use of downscaled outputs as driving variables of specific simulation models; (iii) the spatial interpolation of model’s output to feed an economic and (iv) a quality model. The results show that as a consequence of the projected progressive increase in temperature and decrease of rainfall a) the grapevine growth cycle was shorter; b) the final yield was gradually reduced with a particular relevance for those areas characterised by quality cultivation regulation; and c) the vintage quality was progressively reduced.