Heroic viticulture: Environmental and socioeconomic challenges of unique heritage landscapes.

Steep-slope agricultural landscapes cover a small fraction of global agricultural areas. Despite the limited coverage, they are relevant for high-quality food and wine production, history, and landscape value. On steep slopes, centuries of effort and tradition have created a unique cultural heritage to be preserved.

Future climate-zone shifts are threatening steep-slope agriculture.

Steep-slope agricultural systems are important for food production worldwide. Here we provide a high-resolution global map of steep-slope agricultural landscapes and their spatial distribution in the Köppen-Geiger climate zones for the present day (1980-2016) and future (2071-2100) scenarios. Our analysis demonstrates that steep-slope agricultural areas are much more affected by shifting climate zones than average global agricultural lands, especially by the expansion of arid zones.