Assessing potential climate change impacts and adaptive measures on rice yields: The case of Zhejiang Province in China

Abstract

Increasing temperatures, greater carbon dioxide concentrations, and changes in related climatic variables will continue to affect the growth and yields of agricultural crops. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is extremely vulnerable to these climatic changes. Therefore, investigating the degree to which climate changes could influence rice yields and what effective adaptive strategies could be taken to mitigate the potential adverse impacts is of vital importance. In this article, the impacts of climate change on rice yields in Zhejiang province, China, were simulated under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The impacts of climate change, with and without CO2 fertilization effects, were evaluated and the three most effective adaptive measures were examined. Compared with the yield for the baseline time of 1981-2010, the simulated average yields of all cultivars were inevitably projected to decrease under both RCPs when the CO2 fertilization effects were not considered during the three periods of the 2020s (2011-2040), 2050s (2041-2070), and 2080s (2071-2099), respectively. Declines in rice yields were able to be alleviated when the CO2 fertilization effects were accounted for, but the yields were still lower than those of the baseline. Therefore, the three adaptive measures of advancing planting dates, switching to high-temperature-tolerant cultivars, and breeding new cultivars were simulated. The results indicated that adaptive measures could effectively mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. Although the simulation had uncertainties and limitations, the results provide useful insights into the potential impacts of climate change in Zhejiang province while also proposing adaptive measures.