PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Viticulture is one of the most intensive forms of agricultural land use. It will be strongly affected by climate change impacts in the near future. These impacts, including an increase in periods of drought in summer, a higher soil erosion risk due to short heavy rainfalls, and the invasion of new pests, need innovative solutions.
It is expected that an ecosystem-based approach, based on a considerable increase in biodiversity and improved vineyard management, will enhance the ability of the vineyard ecosystem to buffer natural extremes and make the system more resilient to climate change. Positive effects of increased biodiversity on vines and ecosystem services are apparent, but have not yet been transferred into viticulture practice.
OBJECTIVES
The main objective of the LIFE VineAdapt project was to increase native biodiversity in vineyards to maximise related ecosystem services regarding pest control, soil biota, humification (soil organic content), erosion protection, water retention and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. 8 partners from Austria, France, Germany and Hungary would combine existing knowledge to demonstrate resource-saving and climate-adapted vineyard management practices.
The new methods to be implemented for stress reduction of vine plants caused by climate change included species-rich inter-row vegetation, resource-efficient fertilisation and demand-orientated drip irrigation. Greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by decreasing fertiliser input and fewer machine (e.g. tractor) operations. In changing the usual management practice of understory vegetation in non-organic vineyards, pesticides like glyphosate should be substituted.
The project specifically addressed the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change.
RESULTS
The project achieved the following results:
- 62 vineyards with a total area of 59.3 ha were changed to climate-adapted biodiversity vineyards covering a broad geographic and climatic scale, enabling the transferability of project results to other wine growing regions and countries
- the establishment of natural vegetation in vineyards under different geographic and climatic conditions was shown to be feasible and to have positive biotic and abiotic effects:
- 42% increase in plant species number
- 162% increase in wild bee abundance
- 106% increase in ladybirds
- 165% increase in hoverflies
- 122% increase of spiders
- 50% increase of wasps
- 81% decrease of soil erosion
- over 1.2 million people were reached through a high number of media outputs, workshops and field trips, newsletters, articles in thematic publications and project presentations at conferences.
