%0 Journal Article
%T Impacts of Future Climate Changes on Shifting Patterns of the Agro-Ecological Zones in China
%A Yingzhi Lin
%A Anping Liu
%A Enjun Ma
%A Fan Zhang
%J Advances in Meteorology
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/163248
%X An agroecological zone (AEZ) is a land resource mapping unit, defined in terms of climate, landform, and soils, and has a specific range of potentials and constraints for cropping (FAO, 1996). The shifting patterns of AEZs in China driven by future climatic changes were assessed by applying the agroecological zoning methodology proposed by International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in this study. A data processing scheme was proposed in this study to reduce systematic errors in projected climate data using observed data from meteorological stations. AEZs in China of each of the four periods: 2011每2020, 2021每2030, 2031每2040, and 2041每2050 were drawn. It is found that the future climate change will lead to significant local changes of AEZs in China and the overall pattern of AEZs in China is stable. The shifting patterns of AEZs will be characterized by northward expansion of humid AEZs to subhumid AEZs in south China, eastward expansion of arid AEZs to dry and moist semiarid AEZs in north China, and southward expansion of dry semiarid AEZs to arid AEZs in southwest China. 1. Introduction The world is facing a crisis in terms of food security [1, 2]. The challenge is from not only the growing global population but also the sustainability of nutritious food supply. In order to meet global demands, food production should increase 60每70% by 2050 compared with that at the beginning of the 21th century [3]. Climate change is now widely recognized as one of the most critical influences on sustainability of food supply. It changes the suitability of crop and investment structure in agriculture. Researchers have confirmed that the crop suitability shifts in the context of climate change [4每7]. Lane and Jarvis [8] predicted the impact of climate change with current and projected future climate data and found that the suitable area of main food crops including rice, wheat, potato, and some cash crops such as apple, banana, coffee, and strawberry would reduce along with climate change. According to the evaluation of Easterling et al. [9], even in the scenario of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) low emissions (B1, with a 2∼C rise in global mean temperatures by 2100) the current farming systems will be destabilized. If the increasing suffering from chronic hunger is frustrating today, the further difficulties, risks, and challenges for achieving food security will make people desperate, especially for those in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa [10, 11]. China, which
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amete/2013/163248/