Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Strategies in Northwest China

Climate change resulted in changes in crop growth duration and planting structure, northward movement of planting region, and more severe plant diseases and insect pests in Northwest China. It caused earlier seeding for spring crop, later seeding for autumn crop, accelerated crop growth, and reduced mortality for winter crop. To adapt to climate change, measures such as optimization of agricultural arrangement, adjustment of planting structure, expansion of thermophilic crops, and development of water-saving agriculture have been taken. Damaging consequences of imbalance between grassland and livestock were enhanced. The deterioration trend of grassland was intensified; both grass quantity and quality declined. With overgrazing, proportions of inferior grass, weeds and poisonous weeds increased in plateau pastoral areas. Returning farmland to grazing, returning grazing to grassland, fence enclosure and artificial grassland construction have been implemented to restore the grassland vegetation, to increase the grassland coverage, to reasonably control the livestock carrying capacity, to prevent overgrazing, to keep balance between grassland and livestock, and to develop the ecological animal husbandry. In Northwest China, because the amount of regional water resources had an overall decreasing trend, there was a continuous expansion in the regional land desertification, and soil erosion was very serious. A series of measures, such as development of artificial precipitation (snow), water resources control, regional water diversion, water storage project and so on, were used effectively to respond to water deficit. It had played a certain role in controlling soil erosion by natural forest protection and returning farmland to forest and grassland. In the early 21st century, noticeable achievements had been made in prevention and control of desertification in Northwest China. The regional ecological environment has been improved obviously, and the desertification trend has shown sign of under control.