An overview of the recent approaches to terroir functional modelling, footprinting and zoning

Abstract

Abstract. Notions of terroir and their conceptualization through agro-environmental sciences have become popular in many parts of world. Originally developed for wine, terroir now encompasses many other crops including fruits, vegetables, cheese, olive oil, coffee, cacao and other crops, linking the uniqueness and quality of both beverages and foods to the environment where they are produced, giving the consumer a sense of place. Climate, geology, geomorphology and soil are the main environmental factors which make up the terroir effect on different scales. Often considered immutable culturally, the natural components of terroir are actually a set of processes, which together create a delicate equilibrium and regulation of its effect on products in both space and time. Due to both a greater need to better understand regional-to-site variations in crop production and the growth in spatial analytic technologies, the study of terroir has shifted from a largely descriptive regional science to a more applied, technical research field. Furthermore, the explosion of spatial data availability and sensing technologies has made the within-field scale of study more valuable to the individual grower. The result has been greater adoption of these technologies but also issues associated with both the spatial and temporal scales required for practical applications, as well as the relevant approaches for data synthesis. Moreover, as soil microbial communities are known to be of vital importance for terrestrial processes by driving the major soil geochemical cycles and supporting healthy plant growth, an intensive investigation of the microbial organization and their function is also required. Our objective is to present an overview of existing data and modelling approaches for terroir functional modelling, footprinting and zoning on local and regional scales. This review will focus on two main areas of recent terroir research: (1) using new tools to unravel the biogeochemical cycles of both macro-and micronutrients, the biological and chemical signatures of terroirs (i.e. the metagenomic approach and regional fingerprinting); (2) terroir zoning on different scales: mapping terroirs and using remoteand proxy-sensing technologies to monitor soil quality and manage the crop system for better food quality.

High variability of soil erosion and hydrological processes in Mediterranean hillslope vineyards (Montes de Málaga, Spain)

“…Vaudour et al (2015) reported that in the last ten years several studies have been carried out to evaluate soil erosion processes in traditional European viticulture areas of France, Spain or Italy. Numerous authors claimed that the extreme rainfall events, the steep slopes, the intensive soil tillage practices and the soil surface components could be the most relevant indicators to analyse and classify actual soil erosion processes for these areas.…”

Carbon input threshold for soil carbon budget optimization in eroding vineyards

“…Soil erosion is a problem in vineyards because it reduces soil fertility, damages nearby roads, and causes floods, Lieskovský and Kenderessy, 2014;Martínez-Casasnovas et al, 2015;Vaudour et al, 2015). Higher erosion rates have been recorded in vineyards than in other land use areas (Cerdan et al, 2010) in the Mediterranean region (Vanmaercke et al, 2011) because of several characteristics of the soil, climate, topography, soil management and the vines are planted and cultivated along the slope (Novara et al, 2011;Tarolli et al, 2015).…”

Soil Erosion Processes in European Vineyards: A Qualitative Comparison of Rainfall Simulation Measurements in Germany, Spain and France

“…All these activities notably affect one of the most important components of the terroir: the soil. Pedological process research in terroirs has become one of the most relevant topics nowadays in geosciences [10]. Vineyards are notably one of the land uses, in particular in Mediterranean environments, in which high erosion rates are being recorded [11].…”