Climate, Soils and Landscape: Applying Machine Learning and Principles of Vinecology

to Sustain Current and Future Winegrowing along the Pacific Coast of the Americas
Gustavo Facincani 1
Dourado , Abid 1
Sarwar , John 1
Abatzoglou , Josue 1
Medellin-Azuara , Joshua H. Viers 1
1University of California Merced, CA, USA
Ten machine learning and statistical models were then tested, namely GLM, Figure 6. Historical, future, and overall change in suitability Table 1. Machine learning model performance
INTRODUCTION
Viticulture is integral to cultural heritage of the Americas, while also CART, SVM, RF, GlmPoly, MaxLike, GBM, RPART, MARS, GlmNet. Each Model AUC COR TSS Deviance
contributing significantly to agricultural revenue through a diverse range of model was run with 40 replicates (20 bootstrapping, 20 subsampling with
RF 1.00 0.97 0.97 0.05
high-quality wines. In addition, viticulture fosters sustainable agricultural 30% samples in each replicate). Model performance was tested on the MARS 1.00 0.99 0.99 0.07
practices while contributing to the preservation of biodiversity in vineyard following metrics; AIC, AUC, BIC, Correlation, Deviance, and TSS. SVM 0.99 0.96 0.96 0.08
RPART 0.94 0.91 0.88 0.19
ecosystems and their surrounding landscapes. Therefore, identifying the RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Glm 0.97 0.90 0.87 0.19
characteristics of current and future areas suitable for viticulture (Fig. 1) is CART 0.94 0.90 0.88 0.21
crucial for ensuring the resilience and sustainability of the wine industry in BRT 0.97 0.91 0.90 0.31
the face of climate change. Understanding the terroir can help in the GlmNet 0.98 0.81 0.87 0.55
development of adaptation strategies for climate change at multiple scales MaxLike 0.92 0.76 0.78 0.71
(Fig. 2). Anticipating its long-term effects to the wine industry is imperative GlmPoly 0.95 0.90 0.88 1.78

for land use planning, for identifying immediate physiological stressors, The combination of terroirs shows
and incorporating innovative water management practices [1]. that the local climate, soil and
landscape properties give each
region unique characteristics across
the Pacific Coast of North America.
Besides overestimation of MaxLike
and GlmNet (Table 1), most ML
models identify the suitable areas
generally around the Okanagan
Figure 3. Ensemble responses of each ML model’s replicates Valley in Canada, eastern
Washington, northeastern Oregon,
Central Valley in California, and
Baja California in Mexico (Fig. 3).
Most ML and climate models have a
high agreement of responses in
Figure 1. Cultivation of winegrapes are especially spread throughout Mediterranean regions, characterized winegrowing areas (Fig. 5).
by major cold ocean currents (solid arrows) and Hadley Cells (not shown) [3] Future projections point to declines
METHODS in suitable areas for viticulture, with
We selected vineyards within the American Viticultural Areas in British suitability generally moving to
Columbia (Canada), Washington, Oregon and California (US), and higher latitudes and/or altitudes
Mexico, sourced from the British Columbia’s government, the USDA, and toward cooler climates (Fig. 6).
dismo’s R package global species distribution dataset, respectively. We This information can aid growers
collected 49 variables regarding the terrain and soil properties, and and policymakers in making
historical and future climate, from geodata’s R package global datasets informed decisions about future
(~1km resolution) to predict the distribution of suitable winegrowing areas. vineyard establishment and
We used the Species Distribution Modeling (sdm) R package to simulate relocation, and in adopting adaptive
the probability of current and future winegrowing regions. The predictive Figure 4. Ensemble responses of all ML models predicting suitable areas across GCMs strategies to sustain wine
power of each group of data was tested separately and concurrently. production and quality in the
Variables were tested for variance inflation factor (VIF, r > 0.7) to avoid coming decades.
multi-collinearity, from which 13 bioclimatic, CONCLUSION
3 topographic and 9 edaphic variables Selected vinecological variables and well performing ML models can help
were selected. Future projections (2041- guide decision-making while minimizing impacts to ecosystem services and
2060) are from 8 CMIP6 GCMs. biodiversity. The site-specific complex interplay of natural factors make the
resurgence of new winegrowing areas challenging, demonstrating the need
of local models to better plan the reallocation of crops, and/or the move and
adaptation of vineyard management practices. Under climate change, wine
production can be compromised and could be displaced by other crops.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We acknowledge and thank the U.S. Department of Agriculture who funded
this research through the AgAID and Secure Water Future projects (NIFA
2021-67021-35344 and NIFA SAS 2021-69012-35916, respectively).
REFERENCES
[1] Hannah et al. 2013. Climate change, wine, and conservation. PNAS. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210127113.
[2] Hellegers et al. 2020. Evaluating the ecological realism of plant species distribution models with ecological indicator values,
Ecography. 43: 161–170, 2020. doi: 10.1111/ecog.04291.
Figure 2. Vinecology integrates across domains and at multiple scales to address conservation issues and [3] Viers, JH; Willians, JN; Nicholas, KA; Barbosa, O; Kotze, I; Spence, L; Webb, LB; Merenlender, A; Reynolds, M. 2012. Vinecology:
Figure 5. Global Circulation Model (GCM) and Machine Learning model (ML) agreement
seek ecosystem benefit. Areas 1, 2 and 3, represent scales of 10>6 m2, 102–5 m2, and 100–1 m2, respectively [3] pairing wine with nature. Conservation Letters 00 (2013) 1–13. doi: 10.1111/conl.12011.