Impacts of climate change on winter wheat yield in Central Planins of China:Case study of Shangqiu
中原腹地气候变化对冬小麦产量的影响——以商丘地区为例

Global climate change has significant impacts on agricultural production.Climate variability adversely impacts crop production and imposes a major constraint on farming planning,mostly on how to enhance the yileds of winter wheat,across the world.Owing to the fundamental importance of food to human welfare and of climate to crop and livestock production,various investigations showed that agriculture has been a focus of research on the impacts of climate change on wheat yield.However,considering the recent investigations in the field of the impacts of climate change on wheat yield,many studies were focused on the climate change in large scale regions.Few studies have been done with respect to the impacts of climate change on wheat yields in small scale regions.Therefore,in order to determine the effects of the climate changes on winter wheat yields in the Central Plains,taking Shangqiu,Henan as a study area,the climate data and wheat yields of observation stations from 1991 to 2010 were used in analyses with principal component analysis,correlation analysis,multiple linear regression analysis and Thornthwaite Memoriae model.The prediction results in the future and possible increase extent of the climate productivity of winter wheat were discovered.The results showed that winter wheat yields increased with fluctuations in recent 20 years.The results of principal component analysis illustrated that the main factors affecting winter wheat yields were temperature,precipitation,evaporation and extreme temperature.Excessive evaporation and extreme low temperature had adverse effects on the winter wheat production.The warm-wet climate was beneficial to wheat production,while the cold-dry climate was detrimental to wheat production.In the future decades,the climate variation will present a warm-wet tendency,which could be favorable to the grain yields in the Central Plains,especially in Shangqiu.