A pilot study for climate risk assessment in agriculture: a climate-based index for cherry trees

Viviana Tudela (), Pablo Sarricolea (), Roberto Serrano-Notivoli () and Oliver Meseguer-Ruiz ()
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Viviana Tudela: Universidad de O’Higgins
Pablo Sarricolea: Universidad de Chile
Roberto Serrano-Notivoli: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Oliver Meseguer-Ruiz: Universidad de Tarapacá

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2023, vol. 115, issue 1, No 6, 163-185

Abstract: Abstract Cherry trees are one of Chile’s most important specialty crop activities. Its commercial orchards have an extensive spatial distribution between the 31° S and 48° S, spreading from semiarid to tundra climates, but the trees appear primarily in the Mediterranean climate. Different extreme weather events, such as frosts, precipitation, and high temperatures, affect this crop at different phenological stages, especially in bloom, ripening, and floral differentiation. Based on a high-resolution climatic-gridded dataset of daily temperature and precipitation data, we defined an integrated risk index (RI) representing the frequency of occurrence of the events throughout the plant development period and considering each type of risk affecting each concrete phenological stage. High RI values indicate high climatic risk. The RI follows a meridional pattern influenced by elevation, with higher values in the highest elevations between 36° S and 40° S, sensitive to the simultaneous occurrence of frosts and precipitation events. The northern coast exhibited the lowest risk values, while a general gradient from low values in coastal areas to higher ones in inland elevated zones revealed an altitudinal pattern. Low-risk areas have a sparse distribution of crops, which can be explained by several factors restricting cherry cultivation such as soil limitations, high slopes, lack of productive support infrastructure, and competition with other profitable forestry and agricultural activities in the north and forest production in the south. These results will help to improve climate impact assessments for production systems, which can be conducted by following an easy-to-understand tool.

Keywords: Extreme events; Frosts; Heat damage; Precipitation events; Risk index; Sweet cherry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-022-05549-8

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