The influence of local climate change on the productivity of spring cereals in the Kirov region

Abstract

On the basis of long-term meteorological data and research results in a long-term stationary experiment of 1971-2020 a retrospective analysis of changes in air temperature and precipitation in the eastern region of the central climatic zone of the Kirov region was carried out and the influence of these characteristics on the dynamics of the yield of spring cereals was estimated. It has been established that the average annual air temperature during the research period was 2.4±1.0 °C. At the same time, its stable positive trend was observed at the rate of 0.39 °С /10 years. Two decades from 2001 to 2020 were recorded as the warmest for 50 years, when the temperature was 0.7...2.6 °C above climate normal. Selyaninov hydrothermal coefficient (0.7...2.1) testifies to the contrasting conditions of humidification of the vegetation periods during the research years – from drought to excessively humidified. In a long-term experiment, the yield of spring cereals increased in the row wheat – barley – oats: 2.17±0.86, 3.04±0.61, 3.39±0.65 t/ha, respectively. Strong correlations were marked between the average yield (spring wheat) and weather conditions in June: reverse with air temperature (rр = -0.735) and direct with the amount of precipitation (rр = 0.686). It has been established that the use of phosphorus fertilizers (and their aftereffect) in combination with nitrogen-potassium fertilizers weakened the influence of weather conditions on the productivity of spring wheat: the determination coefficients (R2), which reflect the portion of variability due to weather conditions, were 0.59-0.73 for the variant without fertilizers and decreased to 0.50-0.56 when applying NP3K.