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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]

Since the implementation of the great western development strategy in 2000, the ecological environment in the western region of China has been significantly improved. In order to explore the temporal and spatial characteristics of vegetation coverage in the western region, this paper adopted the method of Maximum Value Composite (MVC) to obtain the mean Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of vegetation on the basis of the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spector audiometer (MODIS) data of 2000/2005/2010/2015/2018. Thereafter, the spatio-temporal differentiation characteristics of vegetation in western China were analyzed. The results show that: (1) According to the time characteristics of vegetation coverage in the western region, the average annual NDVI value of vegetation coverage in the growing season in the western region fluctuated between 0.12 and 0.15, among which that of 2000 to 2010 fluctuated more greatly but did not show obvious change trend. (2) Based on Sen trend and Mann-Kendall test analysis, the area of vegetation coverage improvement in the western region from 2000 to 2018 was larger than that of significant vegetation degradation. (3) From the perspective of global autocorrelation coefficient, Moran's I values were all positive from 2000 to 2018, which indicates that the vegetation coverage in the west showed strong positive autocorrelation in each period. According to the average value and coefficient of variation of vegetation coverage, the vegetation coverage was lower in 2000, its internal variation was smaller, and the vegetation coverage increased with time. According to the local spatial autocorrelation analysis, the vegetation coverage levels in different regions varied greatly. (4) The standard deviation ellipse method was used to study the spatial distribution and directional transformation of vegetation. It makes the result more intuitive, and the three levels of gravity center shift, direction shift, and angle shift were considered: the vegetation growth condition in the spatial aggregation area improved in 2015; the standard deviation ellipses in 2000 and 2018 overlapped and shifted eastward, which indicates that the vegetation coverage conditions in the two years were similar and got ameliorated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]