Environmental Risk Assessment in Agriculture

1. Introduction: some basic concepts (risk, exposure, vulnerability), key elements related to risk assessment and analysis (frequency, variance, probability, uncertainty, expected value), qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, the usefulness of indices

2. Risk factors in agriculture: weather and climate extreme events, effects on crop production, socio-economic effects, protection measures. The role of climate change

3. Heatwave episodes: spatial distribution, inter-annual variability and trends, effects on Agriculture and livestock, options to deal with

4. Frost: methods of forecast, spatial variations, inter-annual variability and trends, impacts on crops and forests, protection measures

5. Floods and heavy precipitation events, spatial distribution, inter-annual variability and trends, impacts on crops and livestock, forecast and means to battle with

6. Hail events: spatial distribution, inter-annual variability and trends, impacts on crops, forecast and monitoring, protection measures, weather modification

7. Other extremes (strong winds and gusts, tornados, waterspouts, Medicanes, etc)

8. Droughts: seasonal and long-term droughts, meteorological, hydrological and agricultural droughts, spatial and temporal variations, impact on agriculture, ecosystems and forests, measures to cope with

9. Fires: wildfires in the Mediterranean, causes and characteristics, inter-annual variability and trends, methods, systems and indices for fire risk assessment, impacts, protection measures

10. Pests, diseases and weeds: main features, the environmental factors that promote their spread, impacts on crops and livestock, management protocols and systems

11. Pollution: air, soil and water pollution, the Agriculture as risk factor for the environment, the agro-environmental indices

12. The key role and the use of high accuracy weather forecast, the climate model in the assessment of future risk, climate-dependent epidemiological models for virus and diseases transmission, risk assessment by the means of the Remote Sensing, the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service

13. The financial aspect: the impact on prices, compensations, subsidies, mutual funds, insurance, contractual price agreements

Laboratory exercises

• Weather analysis and forecast of extremes

• Weather analysis and forecast of extremes

• Statistical analysis of climate data timeseries

• Extraction and statistical analysis of climate future projection data

• Calculation of drought indices

• Calculation of bioclimatic indices

• Calculation of fire risk indices (e.g. Fire Weather Index)