Monitoring vineyard water status using Sentinel-2 images: qualitative survey on five wine estates in the south of France

Abstract

The wine industry must face many challenges because of climate change. One of them is the increase in temperatures and droughts events. These changes sometimes lead to yield losses and can also impact the quality of the wine produced (e.g., increased alcohol content). The management of available water is also a sensitive issue as water requirements for vineyard irrigation are quickly increasing in the south of France. In this context, there is a need for a decision tool that can help evaluate the vine water status through the entire growth season at a large scale. To address this issue, we have previously developed a model (see Laroche-Pinel et al. 2021a) which predicts the vine Stem Water Potential (Ψstem) using Sentinel-2 (S2) images. This model was developed based on a field campaign over three years. The present study now aims to investigate the feedback of winegrowers on the outputs of our model. Therefore, it was applied on the plots of five wine estates that do not belong to the set used in the initial paper. The qualitative results show interesting spatial and temporal consistency in accordance with winegrower knowledge, irrigation data, and weather forecast. The predicted Ψstemhighlights spatial variability in vine fields where a water source emerges and reflects the differences between vine fields with a drip or sparkling irrigation or without an irrigation system. The predicted Ψstem also clearly reacts to a peak in temperature. According to their feedback, three of the five winegrowers would be glad to use this service in the years to come.

Keywords

• Water status
• precision viticulture
• Sentinel-2 images
• Temporal and spatial evolutions