Climate change impact assessment
We prepare climate change impact assessment studies on various areas to assist in strategic decision making.
About the project
Impacts of climate change on olive trees or ICCO is a study funded by the call for research projects for non-profit foundations granted by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge during the year 2021.
Objectives
ICCO aims to:
- Generation of future scenarios of climate change indicators specific to olive cultivation. The FICLIMA methodology is used to obtain climate change scenarios at a local scale, in this case based on the climate change models of the sixth IPCC report. On the other hand, specific derived variables have been identified for the olive tree, which show how climate affects the different stages of its value chain. Finally, future projections of these derived variables have been generated, calculating them from the local future climate scenarios generated, analyzing these projections to evaluate the impact of future climate on the olive grove.
Results
Among its main results, the following stand out:
- The olive grove is one of the most important crops in our country, occupying around 2.65 million hectares and involving hundreds of thousands of olive growers. The olive grove is therefore a strategic sector for the Spanish economy. The Spanish olive grove has a promising future, and therefore, having future climate information at a local scale is essential to be able to adapt to future climatic conditions in the most rigorous way possible.
- The availability of quality climate information on a local scale, which makes it possible to incorporate the microclimatic information of the study area, is vital to ensure the adaptation of the olive sector to future climatic conditions. Having this information will allow decisions to be made that minimize the negative impact of climate change and enhance the positive impacts.
- One of the main conclusions obtained from the study is the importance of obtaining phenological information as well as information on farm management activities and harvest data. Having this information makes it possible to adjust more accurately the relationships between weather conditions and the olive crop and thus facilitate decision making.
- Another important conclusion of this study has been to confirm the need to use climate scenarios based on the CMIP6 models used in the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC, since the new features and improvements that they incorporate over those of CMIP5 are very important, which will very probably mean that in a short time all the studies carried out with the latter will be considered scientifically obsolete.
- As a final conclusion and based on the results obtained, the need to continue carrying out this type of studies, extending them to other areas, should be highlighted, since the adaptation of the olive sector to climate change should be a priority action.
Funded by
Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge through grants to third-sector entities or non-governmental organizations that carry out activities of general interest considered to be of social interest in the field of scientific and technical research and environmental protection under state jurisdiction. This research has been funded by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge but does not express its opinion.
