Vineyards and Vineyard Management Related to Ecosystem Services: Experiences from a Wide Range of Enological Regions in the Context of Global Climate Change

This special symposium focuses on the analysis of climate change impacts on the spatial dimension of vineyard land use. This includes the analysis of projections of current vineyard areas that are lost due to climate change, those that are retained despite climate change, and new vineyard areas that are created due to climate change. The analysis explores the use of GIS over regional and global scales. Furthermore, this symposium sheds light on the socioeconomic dimension of climate change impacts on the wine industry and viticulture by exploring the use of an ecosystem service approach. Such an economic sector is responsible for the provision of a wide range of cobenefits in addition to wine products. These include biodiversity protection and cultural services, including landscape values and ecotourism benefits (see Nunes and Loureiro, forthcoming). In this context, this symposium endorses the ecosystem service approach to the management of vineyards as a regional strategic plan to promote sustainable development. This embraces a broad range of issues including (1) the improvement of people's quality of life; (2) the increase of prospects for more jobs in rural areas; and (3) the protection of regional commons, including both biodiversity and cultural heritage–oriented commons.