Modeling Environmental Impacts on Viticultural Ecosystems: A First Case Study in a Regulated Wine Producing Area

This paper focuses on simulating environmental impacts on grapevine behavioral dynamics and vineyard management strategies. The methodology presented uses technology from geomatics object oriented databases and spatio-temporal data models. Our approach has two principle objectives, first, to simulate grapevine phenology and grape ripening under spatial and temporal environmental conditions and constraints and secondly, to simulate viticultural practices and adaptation strategies under various constraints (environmental, economical, socio-technical). The approach is based on a responsive agent-based structure where environmental conditions and constraints are considered as a set of forcing data (biophysical, socio-economic and regulatory data) that influences the modelled activities. The experiment was conducted in the regulated wine producing appellation Grand Cru Quarts de Chaume, situated in the middle Loire Valley, France. All of the methodology, from the implementation of the knowledge database to the analysis of the first simulation, is presented in this paper.