The wine industry: a model for climate change attribution and adaptation studies
Globally the wine industry seeks to optimize grape and wine quality by matching adapted wine grape varieties to unique combinations of soil and climate in the French concept of terroir. As changing climates clearly challenge these established terroirs, we have used the Australia wine industry as the ‘canary in the agricultural coalmine’ to study the development of climate change adaption strategies in agricultural and food industries. As viticulturalists closely monitor grapevine phenology and maintain long term records the wine industry is also a valuable source of data for climate change attribution studies.
The Wine Industry_Powerpoint Slides.pdf
Emeritus Professor Snow Barlow is a plant scientist specialising in the physiology of plant responses to environmental cues and stresses. He has worked in climate change research for more than 30 years beginning with some of the first studies of the impacts of elevated CO2 on forest and crop plant growth and development.
He was a chief scientist with the federal Department of Primary Industries and Energy and participated as a member of the Australian delegation for Kyoto Protocol negotiations for COP3 and COP4. Shortly after Kyoto he was an initiator and founding member of the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting.
More recently we co-ordinated the Primary Industries Adaptation Research Network (PIARN) of NCCARF (2008-13) and Directed the Climate Change Research Strategy for Primary Industries (CCRSPI)
His recent research has concentrated on the development of CC Adaptation Strategies for the Australian Wine Industry.
He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science. In 2009 he was awarded the Australian Medal for Agricultural Science.
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