Impact of Climate Change on the Growth of Typical Crops in Karst Areas: A Case Study of Guizhou Province

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as a significant man-made global environmental challenge marked by rising temperature. The global rising temperature is supposed to alter climatic patterns like floods and droughts, thereby affecting human life supporting system and global food production. In order to clarify the impact of weather events on agricultural production in karst landforms, this study selected the indices of the growth period of crops (start time and duration), growing season precipitation, intense precipitation, number of consecutive rainless days, and number of drought-flood abrupt alternation events to evaluate the variation trend of future weather events and their impact on crop growth in Guizhou Province, China. The results show that (1) the climate is generally getting warmer. From 2019 to 2050, the sowing period of winter wheat and rice tends to be postponed. The duration of maize and rice’s growth period will be shortened, and the life cycle of wheat also emerges as having a decreasing tendency except for those from the southern region. Comparing with the mean value during 1961 to 2018, the average crop cycle length of winter wheat, summer maize, and rice was shortened. The rate of shortening of crop cycle length is faster than the value during 1961 to 2018. (2) In the next 30 years, extreme precipitation concentrates in June and mainly falls in the central and southeast parts of Guizhou Province. In addition, summer is the outbreak period of drought events and drought-flood abrupt alternation events, which has a great impact on crop’s growth. This study can provide references for the planting system, structure, layout, and management of crops in the karst region.

South Africa’s increasing climate variability and its effect on food production

“…The main findings of the two-way fixed effects (2FE) regression and the multiple regressions for each province confirmed the expectation that the effects of climate change (increased temperature and decreased precipitation) have an impact on food production (maize and wheat yields). The results of this study are in line with the theory of increasing mean temperatures, as confirmed by Ma et al (2019). The rising global mean temperature is thought to change climatic patterns such as floods, droughts, and incidents of the El-Niño and La-Niña, thus affecting human life and global food production and having a negative effect on the main pillars of food security: availability, accessibility, utilisation and system stability (Ma et al, 2019).…”

“…The results of this study are in line with the theory of increasing mean temperatures, as confirmed by Ma et al (2019). The rising global mean temperature is thought to change climatic patterns such as floods, droughts, and incidents of the El-Niño and La-Niña, thus affecting human life and global food production and having a negative effect on the main pillars of food security: availability, accessibility, utilisation and system stability (Ma et al, 2019). Further to this, studies show that the worldwide mean temperature has risen by 0.74°C during the past 100 years (Misra, 2014).…”

Bedrock Type Mediates the Response of Vegetation Activity to Seasonal Precipitation in the Karst Forest

“…Although the forest in CRR suffers more drought stress, the vegetation activity only exhibits slightly lower values than those in NCRR (Figure 3). One possible reason for that is that the trees in the karst environment develop several special adaptabilities against drought stress [40]; for example, the trees in the karst zone often have thick and sponge leaves to reduce transpiration [41]; some plants can reduce the damage of a drought event by improving the activity of their antioxidant enzymes [42,43]. Such adaptive mechanisms can effectively reduce water loss and improve water use efficiency.…”

Characteristic analysis of lightning activities on the Yungui Plateau using ground-based remote sensing

“…In addition, Ma et al analyzed the lightning activities in China from December 2010 to February 2020, and concluded that the southwestern and southeastern sides of the Yungui Plateau are lightning-prone areas in winter (Ma et al, 2022). In recent years, there has been a warming trend on the Yungui Plateau (Shi and Chen, 2018;Ma et al, 2019). However, to the best of our knowledge, the specific analysis of lightning activities of this region remains in 2015 (Wu et al, 2017).…”