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Tea (Camellia sinensis L.), as one of the most important cash crops in China, plays an important role in increasing farmers' incomes and guaranteeing a high quality of life. Tea production has been greatly influenced by both climate change and economic development in China. However, without a scientific understanding of the interaction mechanism of climate change and the impetus from rapid economic development on tea production practices in China, it is difficult to take adaptive actions to meet the climate change challenges for the tea industry. In this paper, we firstly assessed the potential impacts of climate change on tea climate suitability by empirical formula calculation using meteorological data; then, the effects from the additional climatic stress due to warming on tea production were detected with the annual statistical tea yield record on a municipal level. The contribution of socioeconomic development to the tea industry was evaluated with the comparison of the movement of China's national economy's and tea industry's gravity center during the period of 1987–2017. Finally, a conceptual adaptation framework was built to demonstrate the interaction mechanisms between climate change, tea production, and the economic development. The results showed that there was a negative impact of climate change on tea production in mainland China, with the percentage of high tea climate suitability (>0.9) areas dropping by 45% to 32%, while opportunities of enlarging the tea cultivating area emerged in the north tea production region where the tea climate suitability increased. We found that the tea planting area expanded northwards from 33° N in 1987 to 35° N in 2017 to take advantage of the favorable climatic resources due to warming, and tea planting decreased at an altitude of 100–400 m while increasing to higher altitude of 400–2000 m to avoid hot temperature damage and seek the optimum environment in high mountainous areas for tea production. In addition, the tea production moved westward along the longitude, decreasing obviously at 117–121° E while increasing significantly at 98–104° E and 107–110° E. Meanwhile, the tea production gravity center showed a westward movement consistent with the national economic gravity center moving trend, which means that tea industry development was driven by multiple socioeconomic factors and climatic forcings. A conceptual framework was built in this paper, aiming to show a robust adaptation mechanism for the tea system to maximize the benefits and minimize the damages from the altered climatic resources under rapid economic development in mainland China. The results in this study would help deepen the understanding of the adaptation process and practices for tea production in mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use and land cover (LULC) change in tropical regions can cause huge amounts of carbon loss and storage, thus significantly affecting the global climate. Due to the differences in natural and social conditions between regions, it is necessary to explore the correlation mechanism between LULC and carbon storage changes in tropical regions from a broader geographical perspective. This paper takes Hainan Island as the research object, through the integration of the CA-Markov and Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) models, based on multi-source data, analyses the dynamics of LULC and carbon storage from 1992 to 2019 and the relationship between the two, and predicts future LULC and carbon storage under different scenarios. The results show that (1) the built-up land area of Hainan Island expanded from 103.59 km2 to 574.83 km2 from 1992 to 2019, an increase of 454.91%; the area of cropland and shrubland decreased; and the area of forest increased. (2) Carbon storage showed an upward trend during 1992–2000, and a downward trend during 2000–2019. Overall, LULC changes during 1992–2019 reduced carbon storage by about 1.50 Tg. (3) The encroachment of cropland in built-up land areas is the main reason for the reduction of carbon storage. The conversion of shrubland to forest is the main driving force for increasing carbon storage. The increase and decrease of carbon storage have obvious spatial clustering characteristics. (4) In the simulation prediction, the natural trend scenario (NT), built-up land priority scenario (BP) and ecological priority scenario (EP) reduce the carbon storage of Hainan Island, and the rate of decrease is BP> NT > EP. The cropland priority scenario (CP) can increase the LULC carbon storage, and the maximum increase in 2050 can reach 0.79 Tg. This paper supplements and improves the understanding of the correlation between LULC and carbon storage changes in tropical regions, and can provide guidance for the optimization of LULC structure in tropical regions with high economic development from a low-carbon perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has been thought to drive the accelerated expansion of global drylands. However, many studies reveal that Arid Central Asia (ACA) has been warming and wetting in recent decades, representing an anomalous response to global climate change. Given that ACA is composed of complex ecosystems and landforms, it is not clear whether or not this trend is uniform in this topographically heterogenous region. Here, we integrate the Google Earth Engine and ERA5-Land reanalysis data to study the trend of changes, since the 1980s, in temperature and precipitation in the Tianshan Mountains and the surrounding deserts, collectively referred to as the Tianshan and Desert Ecozone, which is in Northwest China. Our results show that only 20.4% of this area is becoming both warmer and wetter, which occurs mainly in the altitudes above 2800 m (Tianshan Ecozone). All three alpine ecosystems (coniferous forests, alpine meadow, and nival zone) in the Tianshan Ecozone exhibit similar warming and wetting trends, including of elevation-dependent wetting on the specific altitude range. In contrast, the low-lying oasis where human activities are mostly concentrated is undergoing warming and drying, which will face a greater threat of drought projected under three emissions scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5). These results highlight the importance of considering the differences of climate change in different altitude gradients and different ecosystems when studying climate change in drylands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]