SPECIFICATION OF IRRIGATION CLASSES COMBINING OPTICAL REMOTE SENSING AND CLASSICAL METHODS IN A CENTRAL EUROPEAN WINE GROWING REGION

R. Lux, B.R. Gruber
Even in some temperate, humid wine growing regions of central Europe there is a growing demand for vineyard irrigation. In previously non-irrigated situations characterised by comparatively low evapotranspiration and irregular summer rain-falls, scheduling concepts with a high level of precision are required to control vine water status and minimize the risks of over-supply. However, the most precise physiological scheduling parameters like water potential measurements are labour-intensive. Therefore they are hardly practical if larger entities are taken into account. Especially in regions with a high diversity of small vineyards like in German steep slope viticulture it is almost impossible to directly assess vine water status for every plot with ground-based measurements. In this study a concept using the specification of irrigation classes was tested in order to minimize on-site-measurements. Such classes can be formed on the base of different datasets such as soil conditions, climate-data, cultivars, plant density, etc. Yet also short-term effects like soil and canopy management can have pronounced influence on actual water status. Therefore static (GIS-) datasets often turned out to be insufficient for being the only base of class formation. We tested optical remote sensing data (visible- and near-infrared) as a possible solution for this problem. Acquired at different growth stages they are capable of showing the dynamics in plant vigour for large areas. Satellite data with suitable radiometric resolution are available on the market but even with compar¬atively high ground resolutions there still remains the problem of scale. Image analysis has to deal with mixed signatures (vine, green cover, ground surface). Therefore we tested simple means of correction and the use of high resolution images (balloon- and ground-based) to account for the composition of the satellite image pixels.
Lux, R. and Gruber, B.R. (2014). SPECIFICATION OF IRRIGATION CLASSES COMBINING OPTICAL REMOTE SENSING AND CLASSICAL METHODS IN A CENTRAL EUROPEAN WINE GROWING REGION. Acta Hortic. 1038, 271-276
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2014.1038.32
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2014.1038.32
Vitis vinifera L., irrigation scheduling, GIS, steep slope viticulture, soil and canopy management
English

Acta Horticulturae