Impacts of climatic warming on cropping system borders of China and potential adaptation strategies for regional agriculture development

Climate warming and its corresponding impacts on agriculture system increasingly attach great attentions. Earlier studies more concerned the impacts of the cultivated area expansion under climate change. Yet limited knowledge is about the impacts of climate warming on the cropping index change with the shifts of cropping system border. In this study, we used climatic data (1961-2015) to firstly investigate impacts of warming temperature on potential cropping system border expansion of China, and further used agricultural statistical data and satellite-based land use data to analyze the response of current land system to potential cropping system border expansion. Results of this study indicated that obviously advanced SDT10 and prolonged EDT10 contributed to the 88.4% regions of increased AAT10 at the past half century. Moreover, the northward expansion of the suitable cultivated areas in different cropping systems provided advantages for potential multiple cropping index (PMCI) improvement. Unfortunately, this study found that a significantly declined multiple cropping index (MCI) was observed in the peri-urban regions and the provinces with large out-migration of agriculture labor. The evidently increased MCI was only greatly observed in Xinjiang province. Besides, the potential increment of multiple cropping index (PIMCI) for different cropping system border expansion regions presented a rising trend and reached 53.6% in 2015 due to warming climate. Particularly, the significantly increased PIMCI was observed in the Loess Plateau, the Inner Mongolia, the Middle-lower Yangtze Plain, Northeast China Plain, Southern China and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region. However, the response of current land system to the changes of PMCI and PIMCI was not timely. Based on the findings of our study, some potential agriculture development strategies were suggested by comprehensively considering regional natural conditions, agricultural production conditions and socioeconomic conditions. We hope these findings of this study could provide some valuable information for agricultural development policy decision-making.