Potential geographical distribution of Avena sterilis L. in Europe

Abstract

Global Climate Change is a major concern for the future sustainability of our development. There will be large alterations over the global ecosystems, where predictions indicate a reduction around 10-20% of world agrosystems production. Climate change might have a deep effect on crop protection. Especially affected would be the weed flora, altering the competitive interaction crop-weed, impacting on weed biodiversity and on weed geographic distribution. Avena sterilis L. (sterile oat) is one of the most extended and harmful specie in Mediterranean climate. The emergence of sterile oat is very dependent of temperature and rainfall. Therefore, it is very likely that geographic distribution of A. sterilis might be affected by climate change. The objective of this study was to simulate the effect of various climate change scenarios. A specie niche model for A. sterilis was developed using CLIMEX. The model calibration was done with eco-physiological data from the literature and was validated with independent data worldwide. Two contrasting climate scenarios were used to project the potential distribution of A. sterilis in Europe under future climate: A2 representing a low-emission scenario and B2 a high-emission scenario. Under both future climate change scenarios, the range of suitable climate for sterile oat in Europe is projected to extend further from Mediterranean regions northward in Scandinavia, Ireland and England and eastward into east Europe (balcanians countries). In contrary, countries in the Mediterranean area, from Portugal to Greece will become unsuitable under the low-emission scenario (B2 scenario) and mostly unsuitable for persistence under the highemission scenario (A2 scenario).