Scientists Question Impact as Vineyards Turn Up in New Places

Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Burrowing Owl Estate Winery is a relatively new vineyard in British Columbia.

For more than a decade, wine experts have discussed the impact of climate change on wine grapes, agriculture's diva, a marquee crop nurtured and pampered around the world.

Now scientists are raising a new question: when grapes are transported to new areas, assuming warming weather and flagging rain make current regions unsuited to such harvests, what will the crop's arrival do to the animals and plants already in residence?

Will there be a conflict between prosecco and pandas in China? Will the contentious wolf hunts near Yellowstone National Park be complicated by new vineyards that crowd out everything else — wolves, elk and hunters?

"One of the adaptation strategies for grape growers will be to move into areas that have a suitable climate," said Rebecca Shaw, a scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and an author of a new paper to be published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This adaptation has the potential to threaten the survival of wildlife."

Or, in the words of the new study, "Vineyards have long-lasting effects on habitat quality and may significantly impact freshwater resources." In addition to introducing sterilizing chemicals and fertilizer, which remake the ecosystem, mature vineyards "have low habitat value" for native species "and are visited more often by nonnative species."

Dr. Shaw believes that the movement of agriculture of all types into land that was once cold and inhospitable should be guided to some extent by its impact on existing ecosystems. "The adaptation of farmers who continue to grow crops and displace wildlife is something that needs a lot more attention everywhere," she said.

A year ago, a Stanford climate scientist, Noah Diffenbaugh, did a study predicting that increased heat in the atmosphere would result in higher volatility in corn prices.

But the wine industry presents a more refined target for study, given the crop's sensitivity and the generations of information that have been gathered on how much sunshine, rain and warmth will produce a grape with the ideal balance of sugar and acid.

The wine industry has undergone more than 15 years of climate-driven change, marked by newly rich vintages in once-chilly regions and the establishment of new vineyards like Burrowing Owl Estate Winery in British Columbia, in the Canadian west, or Yaxley Estate in Tasmania, the island in southeastern Australia.

Nonetheless, it remains firmly centered in its traditional heartlands — Burgundy in France, Tuscany in Italy, California in the United States. But these traditional regions — particularly those that seemed to have the perfect blend of soil, sunshine and temperature — are facing an uncertain future.

Robert Pincus, a scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, wrote in 2003, "Where the culture of wine production is tightly coupled to the current climate, something will have to give."

In the new paper, the authors use 17 different climate models to anticipate which current wine areas will face increasing heat and loss of rainfall, and which areas will warm up sufficiently to be hospitable to viticulture.

They predict that under most climate models, as much as 47 percent of land suitable for wine grapes will be lost in the areas of Chile that have a Mediterranean-like climate. They also indicate that 59 percent of wine country in western North America — mostly in California — will be severely stressed by heat and declining rainfall, and that 74 percent of such land in Australia will no longer be compatible with viticulture.

The equivalent figure for Mediterranean areas of Europe is the most striking; 85 percent of currently suitable lands would become unfriendly to vineyards by 2050.

But it is the spread of wine country into wilder places that has conservationists most worried, and not just for the large animals that may be displaced, but also for smaller native plants.

As the climate changes, said Lee Hannah, the lead author and a scientist at Conservation International, "things with feet and wings are going to move faster, plants are going to move slower. So it is very certain that human agriculture, and in this case wine cultivation, change will move faster than plants will evolve."

His paper predicts that "Western North America has the greatest area of increasing ecological footprint" suitable for wine grapes, especially in the Rocky Mountains near the border between Canada and the United States. Much of that area has been coveted by conservationists who want to create a Yukon-to-Yellowstone corridor for unimpeded migration of various kinds of wildlife, like pronghorn.

In an interview, Dr. Pincus noted that the new study relied heavily on a series of models about climate, suitability of climate for wine grapes, and other elements, but said that its conclusions and concern about conflicts between wildlife and agriculture were robust.

Dr. Pincus noted that a decade ago, Austrian winemakers were talking about moving their crop to higher altitudes where land had been undisturbed. Dr. Pincus said, "The tension is, do you want your Grüner Veltliner, or do you want some wild lands left in Europe?"

He added, "Chile and California are going to have it harder — this is hard to argue with, this is robust."

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