Sixth International Congress on Mountain and Steep Slope Viticulture

SEXTO CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE VITICULTURA DE MONTAÑA Y EN FUERTE PENDIENTE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MOUNTAIN AND STEEP SLOPE VITICULTURE San Cristobal de la Laguna (Isla de Tenerife) – España 26 – 28 de Abril de 2018 “Viticultura heroica: de la uva al vino a través de recorridos de sostenibilidad y calidad" “Heroic viticulture: from grape to win through sustainability and quality” ACTOS PROCEEDINGS COMUNICACIONES ORALES ORAL COMMUNICATIONS ISBN 978-88-902330-5-0 PATROCINIOS Generating Innovation Between Practice and Research SEXTO CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL SOBRE VITICULTURA DE MONTAÑA Y EN FUERTE PENDIENTE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MOUNTAIN AND STEEP SLOPE VITICULTURE SESIÓN I SESSION I Mecanización y viticultura de precisión en los viñedos en fuerte pendiente Mechanization and precision viticulture for steep slope vineyard PATROCINIOS Generating Innovation Between Practice and Research Steep slope viticulture in germany – dealing with present and future challenges Mathias Scheidweiler1, Manfred Stoll1, Hans-Peter Schwarz2, Andreas Kurth3, Simone Mueller Loose3, Larissa Strub3, Gergely Szolnoki3, and Hans-Reiner Schultz4 1) Dept. of General and Organic Viticulture, Geisenheim University, Von-Lade-Strasse, 65366 Geisenheim, Germany. [email protected] 2) Department of Engineering, Geisenheim University 3) Department of Business Administration and Market Research, Geisenheim University 4) President, Geisenheim University ABSTRACT For many reasons the future viability of steep slope viticulture is under threat, with changing climatic conditions and a high a ratio of costs to revenue some of the most immediate concerns. Within a range of research topics, steep slope viticulture is still a major focus at the University of Geisenheim. We will discuss various aspects of consumer´s recognition, viticultural constraints in terms of climatic adaptations (water requirements, training system or fruit composition) as well as innovations in mechanisation in the context of future challenges of steep slope viticulture. Regarding viticultural topics the presentation will focus on novel management practices/technologies which help to improve fruit quality. Where applicable mechanisation of viticultural practices will help to improve on efficacy reducing labour input. During the last couple of years, technical innovations were implemented and improved becoming more environmental friendly. Furthermore, and throughout altering the microclimate canopy management practices will impact on fruit quality and finally on wine style. Protecting the cultural landscape in many steep slope regions will also be of importance attracting tourists which play and important role in the reputation, success and sustainability within these regions. PATROCINIOS Generating Innovation Between Practice and Research Surveying the development of the steep-slope, terraced and mountainous viticultural landscape by using unmanned aerial vehicles: a costs & benefits analysis F. Zottele(1), F. Scandella(1), D. Bucci(2), L. Nabacino(2), M. Scommegna(1) (1)Fondazione Mach. Via E. Mach, 1, 38010 San Michele all’Adige, Italy. e-mail: [email protected]; (2)ITALFLY SRL, via Lidorno 3, 38100 Trento, Italy. e-mail: [email protected] We will present a reliable and low-expensive method to survey drywalls – the landscape marker of Val di Cembra (IT) – by using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in order to quantitatively monitor the evolution of the underlying territory. For Val di Cembra, it is a matter of fact that the global warming, which makes better the grapes from the vineyards located at higher altitudes, in conjunction with the globalist wine market that pushes down the price of wines irrespective of their value, drive the choice of the vine growers to reshape large portion of traditional viticultural landscape removing the drywalls in order to benefit from lower operating costs thanks to mechanization. The key point is that the evolution of the landscape proceeds at an unprecedented speed, much faster than the studies describing the terraced vineyards landscape. The GIS softwares, that automatically detect the drywalls from the Digital Surface Models, terrifically speed up the landscape survey, but these methods rely on data acquisition campaigns which, due to their cost, are conducted only on a large spatiotemporal scale. Indeed, the regional or national data acquisition campaigns are repeated every five or ten years and can not intercept the evolution of the landscape over shorter periods. To tackle this gap, the use of drones seemed to us a viable idea as this tool has been successfully used in the topographic survey: with the appropriate measures during the planning and flight execution phase it is possible to effectively detect the quantitative characteristics (height and development linear) and qualitative (typology) of the (dry)walls and at low costs. Keywords: landscape, drones, landscape markers, drywalls Introduction Steep slope and terraced viticultural territories suffers from an huge increase in vineyard management costs due to the impractical or impossible mechanization, landscape fragmentation, difficult access to the vineyards with additional costs to maintain a widespread system of access roads. These all are limiting factors that reduce the profit margins for the vine growers and consequently the risk of abandonment drastically increases (Zottele and Delay, 2015). On the other hand, the global warming makes the vineyards at high-altitude (and often terraced) attractive for the vine growers because it is easier to attain those quality standards for the grapes that are increasingly difficult to reach at lower altitudes. In addition, new territories at even higher altitudes will become suitable for vine growing (Caffarra and Eccel, 2011, Delay et al., 2015). Moreover, it is proven that the landscape plays a role in the perception of the quality of the wines and some steep slope and terraced viticultural landscapes are well-known worldwide and the landscape is used to promote both wine, tourism, handicraft with a terrific widening-effect on all the economic sectors (Tempesta et al., 2010, Fedato et al. 2017). So, some vine growers remould the territory in order to maximize the individual's economic benefit replacing the traditional terraced landscape, perceived as a limiting factor, with extensive plots suitable for mechanization. In fact, the landscape has always been an evolving process based on the tirelessly choices of the actors playing on the territory: the removal of the elements that makes a landscape unique impacts on what we already have defined as the landscape capital - the landscapital - which could (and sometimes is already used to) increase the value of all the local products (Zottele and Delay, 2017). PATROCINIOS Generating Innovation Between Practice and Research Therefore, knowing how a landscape evolves, by surveying its identifiable elements, is a key-factor to understand whether, and how, the landscapital is perceived and exploited. For Val di Cembra, the principal landscape marker is the ensemble of the dry wall supporting the terraced vineyards. The quicker is the evolution of the landscape the more frequent the surveys should be done but until recently, the prohibitive costs of a landscape characterization based on quantitative criteria (height and linear development of supporting walls) and quality (type of construction: dry stone walls, concrete walls, exposed stone façade) made really expensive to draft a study for a large terraced landscape. Furthermore, one of the limiting factors was to operate safely in an environment difficult to reach. Different and promising methods, based on GIS analyses were proposed and successfully implemented to automatically detect the supporting walls of the terraces (Delay and Zottele, 2012, Cosner and Tecilla, 2015). These methods rely on the availability of the Digital Surface Model (DSM) and Digital Terrain Model (DTM) at high resolution (50 cm/px) and in the case of the cited works these GIS dataset came from airborne surveys with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Due to their cost in both economic and organizational terms of operations, these publicly funded surveys were conducted only on a large scale (regional or national), and temporal (five-year or ten-year). In practice, the landscape changes take place much faster and there is a progressive obliteration of large portions of the traditional landscape with a consequent modification of the distribution of the landscapital in the space. Moreover, the aforementioned methods can provide a precise estimate of the quantitative characteristics of retaining walls, but do not provide the constructive characteristics that are a fundamental indicator of the typicality of the terraced vineyard landscape. From these premises we have devised a method, based on the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), to obtain an high-resolution model of the terraced vineyards to describe the retaining walls in both quantitative and qualitative at the same time. The method must be economic, safe and designed to be potentially flexible and adaptable to other types of landscape markers. Materials and Methods The terraced vineyard chosen for the experimentation.to be noticed, that the retaining walls are hardly distinguishable due to the foliage. We selected a study area (located in the Giovo, IT) with an already recognized landscape: the terraced vineyards present an average slope of more than 50%, the simultaneous presence of the

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