The Impact of Extreme Weather on the Cultivation of Potatoes

#Klimaatverandering, #Landbouw

Gepubliceerd op 29 september 2021

In spring 2021, the largest citizen science campaign ever on the impact of heat and drought in Flanders’ gardens & fields ‘CurieuzeNeuzen in de Tuin’ took off, assuming that we would again suffer from heat waves and long dry spells as we got used to in the past years. But, weather isn’t predictable over a whole season and hence it turned out differently ...

In this blog, VITO Remote Sensing digs into the meteorological observations, the measurements by the CurieuzeNeuzen sensors installed on the potato fields, the impact of the extreme weather on the cultivation of potatoes, and they give an outlook on the analyses planned.

Citizen Science on Drought! Wait, what?

In spring 2021, ‘CurieuzeNeuzen in de Tuin’ was kicked off. Led by the University of Antwerp and De Standaard, this massive citizen science project wants to gain insight in the microclimate and measures to which extent our gardens, public green spaces, and agricultural fields are susceptible to heat and drought. Expecting again a dry and hot summer season, 5000 “gazondolken” or “lawn daggers” were installed to measure the temperature and soil moisture between April and October 2021. But … the summer of 2021 will be remembered as the wettest summer ever in Belgium. What does this mean for a citizen science campaign on heat & drought?

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