Climate Change and Adaptive Management: Case Study in Agriculture, Forestry and Pastoral Areas

Adaptive management has very important practical significance for climate change adaptation and will play a great role in climate change risk mitigation in agricultural, forestry, and pastoral areas of China. Based on the theory of adaptive management, this paper selects Yuanping City from Shanxi Province, Qingyuan County from Liaoning Province, and Kulun Banner from Inner Mongolia as representative cases in agricultural, forestry, and pastoral areas, respectively, to carry out field research, and it uses 1970–2017 meteorological station data to apply vulnerability assessment and climate element change trend analysis, combined with the meteorological hazards data, and explore the adaptive management measures for agricultural, forestry, and pastoral areas in China. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the vulnerability of precipitation in Yuanping is high, the increase in temperature and drought and floods are the most important factors affecting crop yields in agricultural areas, and the key to climate change adaptive management lies in the awareness of farmers of climate change risks and the institutional guarantee of the government; (2) Qingyuan has high temperature vulnerability, and the forest areas have relatively strong adaptive capacity to climate change, but climate change will significantly affect the forest’s carbon sequestration function, and the focus of climate change adaptive management in the forestry sector is on engineering and technology field practices; (3) Kulun has the highest vulnerability to climate change, the frequent meteorological disasters seriously impact livestock development, and climate change adaptive management in pastoral areas relies on the participation of pastoralists’ local knowledge and also needs the support of the government and society.