Current and projected future suitability to olive trees in a present marginal territory of Northern Italy

Projected climate change is affecting the environmental suitability of a territory towards a particular cultivation. This will be of particular importance especially in correspondence of territories which are currently marginal in the biogeographic distribution of a cultivated plant typical of the Mediterranean zone, as olive trees, but they will become more adapt due to the projected future climatic scenarios. In this framework, this work aims to reconstruct different scenarios of environmental suitability of olive trees under current and future climatic conditions. The study area corresponds to a current marginal area for the distribution of this plant, namely an Italian Apennines territory (Oltrepò Pavese). Suitability scenarios were obtained applying a data-driven method based on predictors representative of the main geological, geomorphological, climatic and plant ecology variables influencing olive trees presence in a territory. The results of this work show that the future projections at different periods (short-term, at 2050; medium-term at 2070; long-term at 2100) suggest an increase in the suitable areas for olive trees, due especially to an increase in air temperature and a parallel decrease in the number of frost days projected for the future scenarios. This can guarantee a rise in suitable areas for olive trees especially in those sectors located at higher latitudes and altitudes than the ones currently more suitable to olive trees. This study represents a first attempt to assess the possible evolution of the suitability of one of the most important Mediterranean crop tree in a current marginal area located northern, representing also a useful basis to implement effective strategies of land planning and of mitigation measures to limit the impacts of the climate change effects on cultivation. This work is part of the project NODES which has received funding from the MUR – M4C2 1.5 of PNRR funded by the European Union - NextGenerationEU (Grant agreement no. ECS00000036).