High resolution rainfall variability in the vineyard: first results from a local scale network in Burgundy.
Résumé
Rainfall is a major component of Vitivinicultural Terroirs. In many regions, it controls a large part of water intake by
vine and it has an important role in diseases occurrence. Winegrowers often record rainfall with only one or a couple of
rain gauges. Such a sparse coverage might not be accurate enough to capture efficiently the spatial variability of
rainfall, which is a necessary prerequisite for efficient crop management (e.g. for irrigation or spraying decisions, etc.).
In order to study high resolution variability of rainfall, we implemented a 40 tipping bucket rain gauges network over an
area of 28 km² in the hilly region of Beaune (France). The mesh size of the network varies from 300 meters to 1,000
meters.
Between the 19th and the 22nd of January 2012, a rain sequence was recorded in the studied area. Using Convective
Available Potential Energy (CAPE) data and analysing atmospheric circulation patterns, this sequence has been
classified as a stratiform precipitation event. During this 4-day span, rain accumulations varied from 11 mm to 21 mm.
Geostatistical analysis of the rainfall field indicates that variability increases with distance, in an east-to-west pattern
mainly according with topography. Such a variation of about 100% on a four day stratiform rain accumulation event
was unexpected. These observations, if confirmed by further measurements, might confirm that rain gauges network, as
usually developed for rainfall monitoring in winegrowing regions, might not be tight enough to capture a strong local
variability. Consequently, water intake and parasites monitoring at the vineyard scale might be strongly biased when
assessed by a single rain gauge.