A UNAC - União da Floresta Mediterrânica publicou o "Catálogo de Projetos RIAAC–AGRI", resultante de um levantamento exaustivo da informação científica existente no âmbito da RIAAC-AGRI - Rede de impacto e adaptação às alterações climáticas nos setores agrícola, agroalimentar e florestal, que tem o objetivo de transferir boas práticas e novos conhecimentos para qualificar as empresas e a intervenção dos agentes de desenvolvimento rural no que respeita à adaptação às alterações climáticas.

A UNAC - União da Floresta Mediterrânica publicou o "Catálogo de Projetos RIAAC–AGRI", resultante de um levantamento exaustivo da informação científica existente no âmbito da RIAAC-AGRI - Rede de impacto e adaptação às alterações climáticas nos setores agrícola, agroalimentar e florestal, que tem o objetivo de transferir boas práticas e novos conhecimentos para qualificar as empresas e a intervenção dos agentes de desenvolvimento rural no que respeita à adaptação às alterações climáticas.

The impacts of climate and associated socio-economic changes on water availability, including supply and demand, quality, and storage volume, were evaluated for the Vale do Gaio reservoir in southern Portugal, located in a dry Mediterranean climate and already under drought stress.

The SWAT model was applied with 6 scenarios for 2071–2100, involving two storylines (A1B and B1) with individual changes in climate (−9% rainfall, increasing in winter by+28 to +30%), socio-economic conditions (an increase in irrigation demand by 11%, and a replacement of cereals and pastures by sunflower), and a combination of both. Most future scenarios resulted in lower water availability, due to lower supply (−19 to −27%) combined with higher irrigation demand (+3 to +21%).

This resulted in more years with limited irrigation supplies (presently: 28%; scenarios: 37 to 43%), although limitations were mitigated by lower losses to excess discharge. Land-use changes also decreased quality by increasing P concentrations (+29 to +93%). Impacts were more severe in scenario A1B than in B1, and in combined changes than in climate or socio-economic changes only.

Water availability was resilient to climate change, as impacts led only to a moderate aggravation of present-day conditions. Lower future water availability could be addressed by supply and demand management strategies and, in the most extreme scenario, by water transfers fromregionalwater reserves;water quality issues could be addressed through land-use policies. Results also highlighted the importance of taking the characteristics of water supply systems into account when designing
adaptation measures for future changes.

In this work we developed projections for future fire regimes in the Iberian Peninsula using outputs from Regional Climate Model (RCM) from the ENSEMBLES project. Wildfires are the cause of major ecological and economic impacts in this region, and the increasing evidence of climate change consequences in this region raises concerns on the future impacts of fires in the Iberian forests ecosystems.

Our results confirm that the inter-annual variability of total burnt area is mainly controlled by meteorological conditions, in spite of the current efforts for fire control and suppression. We also show that this meteorology dominance over fire activity is not only true during the fire season itself, but also that certain specific meteorological backgrounds (such as prolonged droughts) may enhance the risk for severe wildfire episodes in some areas.

Based on a previous classification of the Iberian Peninsula into four distinct pyro-regions, we developed statistical models which reproduce about two thirds of the inter-annual variability of the burnt area, using meteorological variables as predictors (calibrated with data from the ERA-Interim reanalysis). Specific models were developed for each sub-domain, testing their robustness for extrapolation under climate-change conditions.

Using an ensemble of state-of-the-art RCM future climate scenarios, we present future BA projections considering two alternative techniques of statistical correction of model data often used in climate change impact studies: (1) unbiasing method; (2) delta change method.

Our results clearly project large increases in mean burnt areas for all the considered pyro-regions, despite some fluctuations regarding each considered technique. By 2075, mean burnt areas could be about two to three times larger than in the present, taking into account current climate projections for the next century, and non-significant changes in other external factors, such as human activity, fire suppression or land use.

In Portugal, the precipitation regimes present one of the highest volumes of extreme precipitation occurrence in Europe, and one of the largest mean precipitation spatial gradient (annual observed values above 2,500 mm in the NW and under 400 mm in the SE). Moreover, southern Europe is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change. In the ENSEMBLES framework many climate change assessment studies were performed, but none focused on Portuguese precipitation.

An extensive evaluation and ranking of the RCMs results addressing the representation of mean precipitation and frequency distributions was performed through the computation of statistical errors and frequency distribution scores. With these results, an ensemble was constructed; giving the same weight to mean precipitation and distribution model skills. This ensemble reveals a good ability to describe the precipitation regime in Portugal, and enables the evaluation of the eventual impact of climate change on Portuguese precipitation according to the A1B scenario.

The mean seasonal precipitation is expected to decrease substantially in all seasons, excluding winter. This reduction is statistically significant; it spans from less than 20 % in the north to 40 % in the south in the intermediate seasons, and is above 50 % in the largest portion of mainland in summer. At a basin level the precipitation diminishes in all months for all the basins with exception of December. Total precipitation PDFs reveal an important decrease of the contribution from low to moderate/high precipitation bins, and a striking rise for days with extreme rainfall, up to 30 %.

Understanding the responses of cork oak (Quercus suber L.) to actual and predicted summer conditions is essential to determine the future sustainability of cork oak woodlands in Iberia. Thermal imaging may provide a rapid method for monitoring the extent of stress. The ecophysiology of cork trees was studied over three years.

Three treatments were applied by means of rainfall capture and irrigation, with plots receiving 120%, 100%, or 80% of natural precipitation. Despite stomatal closure, detected using both thermal imaging and porometry, leaf water potential fell during the summer, most drastically during the third year of accumulative stress. The quantum efficiency (ΦPSII) and the maximum efficiency Fv' /FM' of photosystem II also fell more intensely over the third summer, while non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) increased.

The reduced precipitation treatment sporadically further reduced leaf water potential, stomatal conductance (gs), IG (an index of gs derived from thermal imaging), ΦPSII, and Fv' /FM', and increased leaf temperature and NPQ. It is concluded that these are very resilient trees since they were only severely affected in the third year of severe drought (the third year registering 45% less rainfall than average), and removing 20% of rainfall had a limited impact.