Rice production and climate change in Northeast China: evidence of adaptation through land use shifts

Abstract

Climate change continues to have a great impact on rice production in China, especially in Northeast China (NEC). Historical climate observations from the China Meteorological Administration and statistical agricultural records at the county level were utilized to evaluate the spatial and temporal effects of both climatic and socioeconomic factors on rice production between 1980 and 2010 in NEC by using a linear regression model. The results showed that a 1% increase in the rice accumulated temperature (RAT) significantly increases rice production by approximately 0.728%. Rising RAT over the past three decades increased rice production by 4.44% (equal to a relative contribution of 0.87% to production growth) in NEC, while the majority of rice production growth (79.6%) resulted from increased agricultural inputs. Furthermore, rice production has increased significantly since 2000, and its geographic centroid shifted over 320 km northeastward during the past 30 years. Historical statistical and simulated rice production data for each county were used to quantify the spatial relocation of rice production due to single climatic factors. During 1980–2010, temperature had a significant and coherent influence on moving rice production. The impact of growing season precipitation was not significant, while sunshine had a significant but less spatially coherent influence. Our findings highlight the response of the rice production system to external driving factors, both climate and socioeconomics, to target further research and provide important insights into how a rice cropping system is likely to adapt in a mid-high-latitude region in the future.