Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
4.4 Summary
The studies in this chapter mainly focused on the climate effects of the cultivated land
change in China. In the first part, we first generally analyzed the cultivated land
reclamation and the climate change, e.g., the change of temperature and precipitation
in Northeast China during 2000-2010. Then on the basis of these data, the climatic
effects of cultivated land reclamation in Northeast China during 2030-2040 were
simulated by the WRF model, which has been elaborately introduced in
Chap. 2
.
Finally, the possible effects of the climate change on the grain yield and the potential
influence on the food security were analyzed on the basis of the simulation results.
The simulation result indicated that the temperature in Northeast China would be
increasing on the whole, while the precipitation would be decreasing. Based on the
simulation results, this study proposed some measures and policies to cope with the
future drought and guarantee the grain yield so as to meet the increasing demand for
grain due to the continual population growth.
In the second part, we analyzed the possible biogeophysical effects of cultivated
land change on the climate in northern China during 2010-2030 on the basis of
simulation with the WRF model. The simulation results indicate that the total
cultivated land area in northern China will decrease during 2010-2030, mainly
converting into urban and built-up land and forests due to the urbanization and
governmental policies. Besides, the cultivated land change will lead to the increase
of the sensible heat flux in the regions where a lot of cultivated land will convert
into urban and built-up land; while it will make the latent heat flux increase in the
regions where the cultivated land will mainly convert into forests, mainly through
influencing the evapotranspiration.
In the last part, we explored the impacts of land use/cover change on the near-
surface temperature in the North China Plain in year 1992 and 2005. The results
indicated that the land use/cover change in the North China Plain, which was
characterized by the regional urbanization, had led to significant changes in the
near-surface temperature, making the regional near-surface temperature increase
by 0.03 C/year on average.
Overall, there are still some uncertainties in the research on the climatic effects of
the land use/cover change; also it is still necessary to carry out more in-depth
researches on a series of issues such as the improvement of the climate model and the
resampling method of the land use/cover change data, especially the land cover data.
References
Anderson-Teixeira KJ, Snyder PK, Twine TE, Cuadra SV, Costa MH and DeLucia EH (2012)
Climate-regulation services of natural and agricultural ecoregions of the Americas. Nature
Climate Change 2(3):177-181
Arnfield AJ (2003) Two decades of urban climate research: a review of turbulence, exchanges of
energy and water, and the urban heat island. Inter J Climatol 23(1):1-26
