Project Lead: Amelia Keyser-Gibson, UW Environmental and Forest Sciences

Data Science Leads: Noah Benson and Bernease Herman 

The Climate Ready Vines project is a multi-state collaborative research effort to evaluate and monitor potential energy saving, water use, ecological, physiological and horticultural characteristics of vine plants across different climates and latitudes in the Western U.S. Vine taxa with differing growing habits, performance, rate of growth and leaf morphology have been selected and assigned one of four irrigation deficit treatments based on reference evapotranspiration, soil and weather conditions, to evaluate the influence of plant type and irrigation treatment on leaf temperature and cooling potential. Plants in urban landscapes fulfill important ecosystem services such as shading and cooling buildings and other infrastructure. Increasing maximum and minimum temperatures across the western United States requires fast action to protect people from the dangers of heat stress. Traditionally trees have been used to shade and cool buildings, however, they can take decades to grow to a size which is effective in providing these services. Vines on trellises have the potential to render similar beneficial effects and can be established at a much faster rate than trees.

Experimental plants are grown on standardized trellises and receive one year of establishment irrigation followed by two years of deficit irrigation. Thermal imagery is collected monthly following the initiation of irrigation treatments to quantify leaf temperature across taxa, irrigation treatment and site. Through the accelerator, we are developing image classification techniques to allow for the extraction of temperature data corresponding to plant material, in order to evaluate of whether the amount of irrigation has significant implications for vine cooling potential and use to make taxa and irrigation rate recommendations. Using data from this project we identify the most important plant traits for cooling benefits and ability to maintain those benefits with lower water use across a large climate gradient, critically informing climate change adaptation initiatives in urban areas.