Improvement of Regional Climate by the Protection Forest Shelterbelt on the Old Yellow River Course in North Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

The old course of the Yellow River area in the North of Jiangsu Province was an extremely poor region in the history because of the extremely bad environment, such as salinization of soil, very frequent gales which caused windy sand storm and dry-hot wind which damaged the spring crop yield. In order to improve the residents' environment, forest shelter belt was constructed and forest coverage increased form 3% in 1949 to 37% in 2004 gradually. With field observation data of meteorology by Fengxian prefecture meteorological bureau from 1958 to 2006 and field observation data of forest coverage data from 1949 to 2007, the changes of regional climate by the Protection forest shelterbelt on the old Yellow River course in North Jiangsu Province, China was analyzed. The protection forest of old course in the north of Jiangsu province plays a positive role in the improvement of extreme climate, reducing the extremely highest temperature and enhancing the extremely lowest temperature. It is inferred that the annual average temperature in this region decreased by 0.63 degree during 1991-2006, showing that the construction of the plain forest shelter belt network played an important part in regional treatment of global warming. The protection forest of old course of the Yellow River area in the north of Jiangsu province has improved living environment and the production condition of agriculture, lessened arid wind's damage to spring wheat and rape and lightened the power of gale. These results on the one hand urged the high importance of the construction of forest shelter belt, on the other hand, they also supplied a wonderful positive case of climate changes under the megatrend of the decreasing of global forest area and climate warming, which have important instructive significance on the right recognition of the value of forest shelter belt and for the strategy making of dealing with global climate change for government.