Evolution of Land Use Suitability and Adaptation Strategies of the
Agro-Pastoral Transitional Zone in northern China under Multiple Climate
Change Scenarios
Abstract
The Agro-Pastoral Transitional Zone in northern China is the tail area
of the East Asian summer monsoon, as well as the edge area of crop
production. It is also a typical ecologically fragile area, and its
agricultural and animal husbandry production conditions and ecological
status are highly susceptible to climate change. Climate change has
uncertainty in long-term processes in the future, and how it affects the
suitability of agricultural and pastoral production in the Agro-Pastoral
Transitional Zone constitutes a scientific issue of common concern in
climate change research and regional sustainable development research.
This study is divided into two parts: multi scenario simulation of
climate change and evaluation of land use suitability for agriculture
and animal husbandry. The first part first simulates the uncertainty of
future climate change and the different paths of international response
to climate change by setting low, moderate, and high emission scenarios,
and then simulates the spatial distribution of annual precipitation and
accumulated temperature elements in the Agro-Pastoral Transitional Zone
for three years: 2030 (short-term), 2050 (medium-term), and 2100
(long-term). The second part further constructs an evaluation index
system for the suitability of agricultural and animal husbandry land use
based on the results of multi scenario simulations of climate change,
and comprehensively analyzes the quantity structure and spatial
distribution of suitability levels for agriculture and animal husbandry
in different years under various scenarios. This study has found that in
terms of future climate change, the low and moderate emission scenarios
of the Agro-Pastoral Transitional Zone in northern China have similar
trends in annual precipitation, while the high emission model has more
extreme changes in annual precipitation. The spatial distribution of
precipitation has always maintained an overall pattern of ”more in the
east and less in the west”. The precipitation changes in the northern
and northwestern sections of the Agro-Pastoral Transitional Zone are
relatively small, while the dry and wet changes in the northern and
southern parts of the northeastern sections are large; The overall
distribution of accumulated temperature shows a spatial characteristic
of high in the south and low in the north. The accumulated temperature
changes in the low emission mode are relatively stable, while the
accumulated temperature changes in the moderate and high emission modes
are more extreme. The southern part of the northeast section and the
eastern part of the north China section are the key areas of alternating
cold and warm changes.