Diverse effects of crop distribution and climate change on crop production in the agro-pastoral transitional zone of China

摘要

Both crop distribution and climate change areimportant drivers for crop production and can affect foodsecurity, which is an important requirement for sustainabledevelopment. However, their effects on crop productionare confounded and warrant detailed investigation. As akey area for food production that is sensitive to climatechange, the agro-pastoral transitional zone （APTZ） plays asignificant role in regional food security. To investigate therespective effects of crop distribution and climate changeon crop production, the well-established GIS-basedEnvironmental Policy Integrated Climate （EPIC） modelwas adopted with different scenario designs in this study.From 1980 to 2010, the crop distribution for wheat, maize,and rice witnessed a dramatic change due to agriculturalpolicy adjustments and ecological engineering-relatedconstruction in the APTZ. At the same time, notableclimate change was observed. The simulation resultsindicated that the climate change had a positive impacton the crop production of wheat, maize, and rice, while thecrop distribution change led to an increase in theproduction of maize and rice, but a decrease in the wheatproduction. Comparatively, crop distribution change had alarger impact on wheat （- 1.71× 10^6 t） and maize （8.53 ×10^6 t） production, whereas climate change exerted a greatereffect on rice production （0.58 × 10^6 t）, during the periodfrom 1980 to 2010 in the APTZ. This study is helpful tounderstand the mechanism of the effects of crop distribu-tion and climate change on crop production, and aid policymakers in reducing the threat of future food insecurity.