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Coffee production is fragile, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports indicate that climate change (CC) will reduce worldwide yields on average and decrease coffee-suitable land by 2050. This article adopted the systematic review approach to provide an update of the literature available on the impacts of climate change on coffee production and other ecosystem services following the framework proposed by the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. The review identified 148 records from literature considering the effects of climate change and climate variability on coffee production, covering countries mostly from three continents (America, Africa, and Asia). The current literature evaluates and analyses various climate change impacts on single services using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Impacts have been classified and described according to different impact groups. However, available research products lacked important analytical functions on the precise relationships between the potential risks of CC on coffee farming systems and associated ecosystem services. Consequently, the manuscript recommends further work on ecosystem services and their interrelation to assess the impacts of climate change on coffee following the ecosystem services framework.

Global climate change presents a threat for the environment, and it is aggravated by the mismanagement of water use in the agricultural sector. Since plants are the intermediate component of the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum, and their physiology is directly affected by water availability, plant-based approaches proved to be sensitive and effective in estimating plant water status and can be used as a possible water-saving strategy in crop irrigation scheduling. This work consists of two parts: the first part extensively reviews the plant-based methods and approaches that are most applied to monitor the plant water status (PWS), the different technologies available, the gaps, and the possibility of further improvements in establishing a sustainable irrigation schedule. The various approaches are described, and the differences between conventional and recent improved methods are analyzed. The second part is an extensive dataset survey of 83 publications from 2012 to 2022 that applied the main monitoring methodologies and approaches for water status assessment in fruit and nut tree crops cultivated in a Mediterranean climate. The aim of this work is to serve as a practical reference to deepen reader knowledge on PWS and enhance researchers to identify gaps and potential advances in designing user-friendly monitoring technologies.

Rice is a crop that is usually grown under flooded conditions and can require large amounts of water. The objective of this 3-year study was to quantify water use in water- (WS) and dry-seeded (DS) systems. In WS systems, the field is continuously flooded, while in DS systems the field is flush irrigated for the first month and then flooded. Research was conducted on commercial rice fields where the residual of the energy balance method using a sonic anemometer and the eddy covariance method were used to determine crop evapotranspiration (ETc) and crop coefficient (Kc) values. In addition, inlet irrigation water and tailwater drainage were determined. Across years, there was no difference in ETc (averaged 862 mm), sea- sonal Kc (averaged 1.07), irrigation water delivery (aver- aged 1839 mm) and calculated percolation and seepage losses (averaged 269 mm) between systems. An analysis of the first month of the season, when the water management between these two practices was different, indicated that Kc and water use were lower in DS systems relative to WS systems when there was only one irrigation flush during this period, while two or three irrigation flushes resulted in similar values between the two systems.

Climate change in Mediterranean countries is anticipated to have a strong impact on water availability by exacerbating drought conditions and water scarcity. In this context, efficient irrigation practices are becoming essential for sustaining crop production. This work assesses vulnerability of irrigated agriculture for six irrigation districts and their associated reservoirs in Mediterranean areas across Italy under climate change (1976–2005 versus 2036–2065; RCP 4.5 and 8.5), evaluating changes in irrigation requirements, evaporation from reservoirs, and the availability of freshwater supplies. Irrigation requirements are estimated through a crop water model (SIMETAW_R) integrated into a GIS platform, while inflows to reservoirs are hydrologically modelled as partitioning of precipitation contributing to runoff. Results are aggregated into indicators that show the general decreasing resilience and increasing vulnerability of irrigated agriculture under climate change conditions in each case study. The highest percentage of allowable water losses for irrigation is estimated in the Cuga-Alto Temo system, during the prolonged drought period, to be able to satisfy irrigation demand for less than a year. Climate change may only partially affect irrigation in resilient systems, in which storage capacity and the water level entering into the reservoir are considerably higher than the water distribution volumes.

In the Mediterranean region, ecosystems are severely affected by climate variability. The Italian Peninsula is a hot spot for biodiversity thanks to its heterogeneous landscape and the Mediterranean, Continental, and Alpine climates hosting a broad range of plant functional types along a limited latitudinal range from 40′ to 46′ N. In this study we applied a comparative approach integrating descriptive statistics, time series analysis, and multivariate techniques to answer the following questions: (i) do the climatic variables affect Gross Primary Productivity (GPP), Reco, Water Use Efficiency (WUE), and ET to a similar extent among different sites? (ii) Does a common response pattern exist among ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient in Italy? And, finally (iii) do these ecosystems respond synchronically to meteorological conditions or does a delayed response exist? Six sites along a latitudinal, altitudinal, and vegetational gradient from semi-arid (southern Italy), to a mountainous Mediterranean site (central Italy), and sub-humid wet Alpine sites (northern Italy) were considered. For each site, carbon and water fluxes, and meteorological data collected during two hydrologically-contrasting years (i.e., a dry and a wet year) were analyzed. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was adopted to identify temporal and spatial variations in GPP, Ecosystem Respiration (Reco), WUE, and Evapotranspiration (ET). The model outlined differences among Mediterranean semi-arid, Mediterranean mountainous, and Alpine sites in response to contrasting precipitation regimes. GPP, Reco, WUE, and ET increased up to 16, 19, 25, and 28%, respectively in semi-arid Mediterranean sites and up to 15, 32, 15, and 11%, respectively in Alpine sites in the wet year compared to the dry year. Air temperature was revealed to be one of the most important variables affecting GPP, Reco, WUE, and ET in all the study sites. While relative air humidity was more important in southern Mediterranean sites, global radiation was more significant in northern Italy. Our work suggests that a realistic prediction of the main responses of Italian forests under climate change should also take in account delayed responses due to acclimation to abiotic stress or changing environmental conditions.

Several modelling tools reported the climate change impact on the coffee agrosystems. This article has adopted a systematic approach to searching out information from the literature about different modelling approaches to assess climate change impacts or/and adaptation on coffee crops worldwide. The review included all scientific publications from the date of the first relevant article until the end of 2022 and screened 60 relevant articles. Most results report research conducted in America, followed by Africa. The models assessed in the literature generally incorporate Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emission scenarios (80% of manuscripts), particularly Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) and Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES), with the most common projection periods until 2050 (50% of documents). The selected manuscripts contain qualitative and quantitative modelling tools to simulate climate impact on crop suitability (55% of results), crop productivity (25% of studies), and pests and diseases (20% of the results). According to the analysed literature, MaxEnt is the leading machine learning model to assess the climate suitability of coffee agrosystems. The most authentic and reliable model in pest distribution is the Insect Life Cycle Modelling Software (ILCYM) (version 4.0). Scientific evidence shows a lack of adaptation modelling, especially in shading and irrigation practices, which crop models can assess. Therefore, it is recommended to fill this scientific gap by generating modelling tools to understand better coffee crop phenology and its adaptation under different climate scenarios to support adaptation strategies in coffee-producing countries, especially for the Robusta coffee species, where a lack of studies is reported (6% of the results), even though this species represents 40% of the total coffee production.

Quantifying actual evapotranspiration (ETa) over natural vegetation is crucial in evaluating the water status of ecosystems and the water-use patterns in local or regional hydrological basins. Remote sensing-based surface energy balance models have been used extensively for estimating ETa in agro-environments; however, the application of these models to natural ecosystems is still limited. The surface energy balance algorithm for land (SEBAL) physical-based surface energy balance model was applied to estimate the actual evapotranspiration over a heterogeneous coverage of Mediterranean maquis in a natural reserve in Sardinia, Italy. The model was applied on 19 Landsat 5 and 8 images from 2009 to 2014, and the results were compared to the data of a micrometeorological station with eddy covariance flux measurements. Comparing the SEBAL-based evaporative fraction (ΛS) to the corresponding tower-derived evaporative fractions (ΛT) showed good flux estimations in the Landsat overpass time (Coefficient of determination R2 = 0.77, root mean square error RMSE = 0.05 and mean absolute error MAE = 0.076). Three methods were evaluated for upscaling instantaneous latent heat flux (λE) to daily actual evapotranspiration (ETa,D). The upscaling methods use the evaporative fraction (Λ), the reference evapotranspiration fraction (EFr) and the ratio of daily to instantaneous incoming shortwave radiation (Rs24/Rsi) as upscaling factors under the hypothesis of diurnal self-preservation. A preliminary analysis performed using only in-situ measured data demonstrated that the three factors were relatively self-preserved during the daytime, and can yield good ETa,D estimations, particularly when obtained at near the Landsat scene acquisition time (≈10:00 UTC). The upscaling factors obtained from SEBAL retrieved instantaneous fluxes, and some ancillary measured meteorological data were used to upscale SEBAL-estimated instantaneous actual λ to daily ET. The Λ EFr and Rs24/Rsi methods on average overestimated the measured ETa,D by nearly 20, 61 and 18%, respectively. The performance of the Λ and Rs24/Rsi methods was considered satisfactory, bearing in mind the high variable ground cover and the inherent variability of the biome composition, which cannot be properly represented in the Landsat moderate spatial resolution. In this study, we tested the potential of the SEBAL model application in a complex natural ecosystem. This modeling approach will be used to represent the spatial dynamics of ET, which will be integrated into further environmental and hydrological applications.

Climate change is a concerning phenomenon worldwide. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is the core of the mitigation strategies that are effective countermeasures to address a changing climate in the long term. Nevertheless, the need for short-term solutions regarding adaptation to climate change (ACC) has gained growing interest in the scientific community and in European institutions. European and national ACC principles are being integrated in strategies and plans. In Italy, some regions have adopted ACC principles in strategic plans, which influence the whole local planning system and persuade local communities to become more climate-resilient. This study focuses on the mainstreaming of ACC into strategies, plans, programs, and projects (SPPPs) adopted by the following Italian cities: Bologna, Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin, and Venice. We scrutinize the contents of SPPPs with respect to four criteria: (i) references to strategies or plans for ACC; (ii) inclusion of ACC objectives and (iii) measures; and (iv) references to—or the inclusion of—climatic analysis on historical series and/or future projections. We found out that most SPPPs adopted by the cities have considered ACC in a promising way, i.e., all the cities are inclined to promote ACC, despite three of them lacking a municipal ACC strategy or plan and a National Adaptation Plan not being in force.

Improving water use efficiency is a key element of water management in irrigated viticulture, especially in arid or semi-arid areas. In this study, the micrometeorological technique “Eddy Covariance” was used to directly quantify the crop evapotranspiration (ET) and to analyze the complex relationships between evapotranspiration, energy fluxes, and meteorological conditions. Both observed Direct measurements (DIR) of latent heat flux (LE) and observed from the residual of the energy balance (REB) equation were used for crop evapotranspiration calculations. Observed crop coefficients ( K cms ) were then determined using the standardized reference evapotranspiration (ET o ) equation for short canopies. In addition, linear approximations from observations were used to model the seasonal trend lines for crop coefficients and K cs values were parameterized by first identifying the beginning and end of each growth stage. The modeled K cs values were used to predict daily ET from ET o measurements and compared with values from literature. The daily observed DIR ET values (ET do ) were lower than REB ET (ET ro ) during periods with precipitation, but they were similar during dry periods, which implies that energy balance closure is better when the surface is drier. Comparisons between modeled ET and crop ET estimated using K c values from best agreement was observed between the modeled REB and FAO 56 and the local K c values provided by the Regional Agency ARPAS showed good agreement with observed ET (from DIR and REB data) than the FAO 56 ones. The study confirmed that the availability of locally driven K c could be relevant to quantify the crop water requirement and represents the starting point for a sustainable management of water resources.

As a result of Kyoto Protocol agreements, the scientific community increased its efforts to enhance the availability of biomass and organic carbon stock data in forest ecosystems. Nevertheless, a considerable data shortage has been recognized in estimating the stock of above-ground biomass (AGB) in Mediterranean maquis systems. This work aims at contributing in addressing such shortage by testing quick and non-disruptive methods to estimate the AGB stock in maquis species. Two methodologies were tested in three widespread sclerophyllous evergreen species (Pistacia lentiscus, Euphorbia dendroides, and Cystus monspeliensis). Both methodologies were based on the estimation of the apparent volume (AV): the first one assumed the shrub shape (or canopy) to be similar to a regular tridimensional solid, while the second method was based on plant digital images analysis. Results showed some differences in AV values estimated through the two methodologies, although a high correlation was found between them (R2 = 0.92-0.98) and with the AGB weight obtained from plant samples (R2 = 0.89-0.96). As a consequence, the shrubs apparent density values (i.e., weight/AV) vary depending on the method used for AV estimation. This should be taken into account when AV is used for AGB estimation. Besides, measurements of above-ground biomass were carried out to characterize the studied area. Results showed high variability in AGB values, ranging from 7.04 to 48.05 Mg ha-1 of dry matter.