Abstract
The olive tree is one of the most characteristic rainfed trees in the Mediterranean region. Observed and forecasted climate modifications in this region, such as the CO2 concentration and temperature increase and the net radiation, rainfall and wind speed decrease, will likely alter vegetation water stress and modify productivity. In order to simulate how climatic change could alter soil moisture dynamic, biomass growth and fruit productivity, a water-driven crop model has been used in this study. The numerical model, previously calibrated on an olive orchard located in Sicily (Italy) with a satisfactory reproduction of historical olive yield data, has been forced with future climate scenarios generated using a stochastic weather generator and a downscaling procedure of an ensemble of climate model outputs. The stochastic downscaling is carried out using simulations of some General Circulation Models adopted in the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report (4AR) for future scenarios. The outcomes state that climatic forcings driving potential evapotranspiration compensate for each other, resulting in a slight increase of this water demand flux; moreover, the increase of CO2 concentration leads to a potential assimilation increase and, consequently, to an overall productivity increase in spite of the growth of water stress due to the rainfall reduction.
Highlights
The olive tree is considered one of the best adapted species to the semiarid environment [1].Climatic conditions in Mediterranean areas are rapidly changing, and it is crucial to understand how photosynthesis, growth and yield are affected by these modifications.One of the best documented global atmospheric changes due to human activities is the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, which is widely expected to modify stomatal conductance, plant transpiration and, crop yields
A careful analysis of this figure shows that, keeping the current value of CO2 concentration and reducing the annual rainfall, one could observe an olive yield reduction, coherently with the results shown by Viola et al [50]
The interrelations between future climate scenarios and olive yield have been investigated for a Mediterranean orchard
Summary
The olive tree is considered one of the best adapted species to the semiarid environment [1].Climatic conditions in Mediterranean areas are rapidly changing, and it is crucial to understand how photosynthesis, growth and yield are affected by these modifications.One of the best documented global atmospheric changes due to human activities is the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration, which is widely expected to modify stomatal conductance, plant transpiration and, crop yields. Cure and Acock [2] summarized the literature base for modeling ten plant responses to a doubled CO2 concentration. They made mention of yield increase (41% on average), conductance and transpiration decrease (20% and 23%, respectively, on average), caused by a doubling of CO2 concentration. They noticed that responses of most crops to a CO2 increase are conditioned by nutrient concentration, light intensity and temperature
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