Virginia Vineyards Portal

CGIT has been at the forefront of vineyard site assessment for over ten years. The legacy eastern coast vineyards tool was retired in 2017 due to lack of research/maintenance funding.  The current GeoVine tool, funded by the Virginia Wine Board and Maryland Wineries Association, builds upon the legacy tool and adds many functionalities detailed below.  If you would like to discuss the availability of the vineyard site assessment report, models and forecast reports for your state, please contact cgitsupport@vt.edu.

GeoVine brings together new and existing tools and includes links to outside sources such as Extension sources, Mizuho Nita's IPM pages, and more. The new portal features will include user accounts for management, desktop, smartphone, or tablet interfaces, and a 'MyVineyard' Site mapping capability that can send email site-specific reports and alerts to vineyard managers.

Both the site assessment and interpretation processes will be enhanced in a PDF report. Information from supplemental sources will be provided in an ensemble approach in which spatial climate data from PRISM (used in the current report), DayMet, IPCC Climate Change Scenarios and individual station data from NOAA-GHCN can be incorporated simultaneously in the site assessment report. Interpretation will be provided to aid the end user in understanding the differences and appropriateness of the various sources of weather and climate data. New historical climate data and derived growing season metrics (Length of Growing Season, GDDs, etc) from ORNL Daymet and IPCC Climate Change data using future scenarios will better characterize the uncertainty regarding the probability of low temperatures in the spring and growing season metrics. Historical climate data will also be disaggregated by creating separate climatologies for cycles such as El Nino/La Nina and ENSO, enabling growers to better forcast within a season based on current major weather cycles and patterns.

GeoVine will include a new Site Score resource and interactive Map and Model interface that allow users to adjust results based on risk tolerance. CGIT will guide the selection of suitable value ranges for parameters which are used as the initial values in the site score. Each grape variety (initially, six varieties) will have a unique score based on growing season requirements and cold hardiness, and potentially other differentiating factors. Users will be able to adjust the parameters based on their risk tolerance or preference. Calibration and validation of parameters for site scores will be accomplished using NE1020 variety trial data and NASA DEVELOP polygons for roughly 800 vineyards in Virginia. 

Vineyard Management related information will be included in the portal, extending the utility of the tools to current growers. Real-time weather and models are currently in beta using RTMA data. CGIT also proposes to include a six-day NWS National Digital Forecast Database Weather Forecast. The management information is initially focused on a grape degree-day model, budbreak model, and cold hardiness modelswill be developed in the web interface. A module for GeoVine will eventually allow optional submission of observations and measurements collected from growers to enable the research team to calibrate and validate phenology and cold hardiness models. Managers and growers will be able to receive automated alerts on weather conditions and risk, degree-day accumulations and forecasts, and potentially disease risk reports.