Precipitation - forests - wine at the Weinviertel

Precipitation - forests - wine at the Weinviertel The variability of precipitation and the influence on forests and agricultural yield at the Weinviertel in past times, nowadays and in the future WATER … and the availability are important factors for the development of plants. The area of the Weinviertel is one of the driest and warmest regions in Austria. Drought periods occur often and the frequency will increase due to climate change. The hot and dry year of 2003 is still in our mind. These drought periods can be seen in the vegetation – especially in … FORESTS …, because the trees produce annual tree rings. The width of these rings is dependent on the availability of water: low/high amounts of water – small/wide rings. The history of the climate is stored in the wood of the trees. The pattern of ring width is characteristic for a region and can be compared to other trees – even the trees died a long time before and their wood is preserved as construction like for roofs, ceilings and so on. If the time span of living trees and wooden constructions is overlapping, so called chronologies can be set up. Analysing these chronologies, the past variability of precipitation, back in time prior to meteorological measurements, can be studied. At the … WEINVIERTEL … the amount of wine yards is higher than of forests in the Weinviertel region. Wine also stores some information of the weather of the year: the time of harvest, the quantity and the quality. Wine was almost an important product of the region – so there are notes in archives on these data available. In contrast to the trees of the forests, wine includes information about the temperature during summer. The common analyses of tree rings and wine harvesting to reconstruct the climatic history of a region is a new approach and a collaboration of different scientific fields is necessary. The insights of these analyses are important for the present time and the future of this region. The schoolboy and –girls (farmers, foresters, scientists and people of the region of the future) will be part of this project.