Climate Change and Adaptive Management: Case Study in Agriculture, Forestry and Pastoral Areas

Xin Xuan,Fan Zhang,Bing Liu

doi:10.3390/land10080832

Abstract

Adaptive management has very important practical significance for climate change adaptation and will play a great role in climate change risk mitigation in agricultural, forestry, and pastoral areas of China. Based on the theory of adaptive management, this paper selects Yuanping City from Shanxi Province, Qingyuan County from Liaoning Province, and Kulun Banner from Inner Mongolia as representative cases in agricultural, forestry, and pastoral areas, respectively, to carry out field research, and it uses 1970–2017 meteorological station data to apply vulnerability assessment and climate element change trend analysis, combined with the meteorological hazards data, and explore the adaptive management measures for agricultural, forestry, and pastoral areas in China. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the vulnerability of precipitation in Yuanping is high, the increase in temperature and drought and floods are the most important factors affecting crop yields in agricultural areas, and the key to climate change adaptive management lies in the awareness of farmers of climate change risks and the institutional guarantee of the government; (2) Qingyuan has high temperature vulnerability, and the forest areas have relatively strong adaptive capacity to climate change, but climate change will significantly affect the forest’s carbon sequestration function, and the focus of climate change adaptive management in the forestry sector is on engineering and technology field practices; (3) Kulun has the highest vulnerability to climate change, the frequent meteorological disasters seriously impact livestock development, and climate change adaptive management in pastoral areas relies on the participation of pastoralists’ local knowledge and also needs the support of the government and society.

Highlights

At present, climate change caused by large amounts of carbon dioxide emissions has brought very serious challenges to the development of China’s agriculture, forestry, and pasture
In forestry, the excessive increase in carbon dioxide concentration will inhibit the carbon sequestration of forests and aggravate global climate change [8,9]; in pastoralism, climate change will lead to an increase in land desertification and a decrease in vegetation cover, which will seriously threaten the environment of grassland ecosystems [10,11]
Most of the traditional climate change adaptation countermeasures are aimed at the large-scale level, with less consideration of the specificity of the natural conditions and economic base of each region, which makes it difficult to achieve the goal of improving the adaptive capacity of climate change at the grassroots level [19,20]

Summary

Introduction

Climate change caused by large amounts of carbon dioxide emissions has brought very serious challenges to the development of China’s agriculture, forestry, and pasture. Climate change will directly threaten the production of agriculture, forestry, and pasture, and even cause damage to food security and sustainable economic development [2,3,4]. Natural resource conditions and economic and social development conditions vary greatly among regions in China, and the differences in climate change impacts in agriculture, forestry, and pastoralism are significant [14]. The formulation of reasonable and effective measures of coping with climate change requires the support of scientific data [15] and full consideration of local economic and cultural backgrounds, incorporating local residents’ awareness and attitudes toward climate change and incorporating local traditional practices for coping with climate change [16,17,18]. Can coordinate the interrelationship between regional environment, economy, and society by fully considering the regional economic and social background and local knowledge [21]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion