Agrometeorological services for landscape agronomy: The Italian case in the European context

Abstract

Agricultural landscapes have always been influenced by the local climate. In this context, agrometeorology plays a key role in building decision support systems (DSS) to face the challenges of climate change, as also stressed by the recent Common Agricultural Policy (CAP 2014-2020) of the European Union. To make such DSS effective, accurate agrometeorological data, both time series and real-time observations, must be available. The chapter presents the Italian case: in the framework of the National Rural Network, the Agrometeore project aims to improve and expand resources for agrometeorology at the NUTS2 level, having established a national task force focused on stimulating resource sharing among and interoperability of agrometeorological services. As a first step, a survey on the main features of weather station networks and on data maintenance, processing, and dissemination was administered to each regional representative of the national task force. Survey results showed great heterogeneity among the networks. Based on national websites of (agro)meteorological services, an analogous analysis was performed at the European level. The results again showed great heterogeneity among countries. Participatory processes such as those launched in Italy could strengthen agrometeorological services and make them better able to meet challenges of the future climate in agriculture.