LONG RANGE REGIONAL CLIMATE FLUCTUATIONS/CHANGES AND THEIR IMPACT ON AGRICULTURE--A CASE STUDY FOR CHHATTISGARH STATE IN CENTRAL INDIA

摘要

Climate change is now felt as a reality world wide and intensive research work is being carried out on the scale of the change and its impact on different sectors. However, the global changes are the totality of the regional scale changes which integrate to form a global scenario. More over, the regional scale changes are much more than the global changes in either positive or negative intensities. So also their impact at regional scale varies depending upon several factors including socio-economic conditions. In view of the above, studies were carried out to assess the regional climate changes in Chhattisgarh state in Central India and their impacts on agriculture have been assessed. It was found that the scale of variability is not the same in the entire state. In pockets, the rainfall decreased by 30-35 per cent while in some other pockets, the rainfall decreased from 0-5 per cent only. With the changes in rainfall the general climate of the region has also changed. In some pockets, the climate changed from 'moist sub-humid' type to 'semi-arid' and in other pockets it changed from 'moist sub-humid' to dry-sub-humid'. Such changes in the rainfall and there by the climate change have influenced the agriculture in the state. Studies revealed that the farmers are adopting the climate change by shifting from long duration local rice varieties to short duration high yielding varieties (HVY) of rice. It was also observed that during last 3 decades the wheat-growing zone has moved northwards.