India is the world's 5th largest coffee producer with production areas concentrated in the Western Ghats, one of the world hotspots of biodiversity. In this region, coffee grown under the shade of multistrata systems, predominates the landscape and plays a major role in biodiversity conservation and provision of goods and services for the local and global communities. One key service identified by local stakeholders relates to local climate and water circulation, a critical issue since the main rivers providing water for urban centres and agriculture in southern India also originate in these coffee areas. Over the last 30 years, the tree cover of coffee agroforestry systems has been profoundly affected by the development of the area under coffee cultivation and important changes to the production systems in the form of new varieties and practices such as irrigation and simplification of tree cover. In this paper, we explore to extent to which these landscape dynamics have impacted the regulation of local weather conditions. To assess the provision of this critical ecosystem service, we collected historical data (up to more than 50 years) on daily rainfall from over 100 farms along an east west transect in the Kavery watershed of Kodagu district, the most important coffee district of the region. Therefore, we covered within this watershed a range of ecological conditions going from 6000 mm of annual rainfall in the evergreen western belt to 1200 mm in the deciduous eastern belt. We related this information to the spatial dynamics described through remote sensing for the last 40 years. Taking advantage of the contrasting ecological conditions and landscape dynamics in the watershed, we explored the effects of changes in tree cover in these coffee agroforests on the rainfall pattern and identified key management practices that could lead to preserving or enhancing their role as water providers. (Texte intégral)