Project Background and Requirements

Since the 1980s, China’s agricultural production environment and climate environment have undergone tremendous changes, they are including：

1. The technology of agricultural science are progressing, the new and high technology are introducing, the agriculture is developing towards high yield, high quality, high efficiency and low consumption. The planting industry is transforming to the three-dimensional structure of grain-economy-feed crops. The small-scale production and large-scale market are developing to the direction of large-scale operation, the gradual realization of the integration of planting, feeding, production, supply and marketing, trade, industry and agriculture. The adjustment of rural industrial structure puts forward new requirements for agroclimatic regionalization.

2. Climate conditions and climate resources have changed. For example, the average temperature in Northeast China is rising, the drought area in North China is expanding, and the flood and waterlogging in the Yangtze River Basin are increasing. Especially since the 1990s, the abnormal climate events have shown a significant increase trend. It is necessary to re-recognize the changes of climate resources and their rational utilization and protection.

3. Great changes have taken place in the technical conditions of agroclimatic regionalization. “3S” (GIS, RS, GPS) and network technology show broad prospects in the dynamic monitoring and development of agricultural climate resources.

4. The development of agricultural production has put forward higher requirements for the exploitation, utilization and protection of climate resources. Meteorological departments must rely on scientific and technological progress and technological innovation to meet the needs of society. Establishing a regional information system based on “3S” and network platform will help meteorological stations to improve their meteorological service means and technology.

5. Facing the new agricultural technology revolution and sustainable agriculture strategy in the 21st century, agricultural climate resources need to be evaluated scientifically and objectively, which is as an important investment environment.

The purpose of the third agroclimatic regionalization project proposed by China Meteorological Administration is to develop the software of Agriculture and Climate Distributed Information System (ACDIS) with new technologies, new methods and new data, to establish a monitoring system for the exploitation, utilization and protection of climate resources, and to carry out the resource level and three-dimensional, time and space in all directions. We should optimize the allocation of resources, give full play to regional climate advantages, seek benefits and avoid hazards, reduce the loss of climate disasters, and improve the overall benefits of resource development. It will provide decision-making basis for governments at all levels to guide agricultural production, adjust rural industrial structure, return farmland to forestry and prevent soil erosion, and serve local governments.

System Structure and Work Flow of Agricultural Climate Zoning Information System (ACDIS)

Application of “3S” in project

1) Spatial query and management of comprehensive factors in agroclimatic regionalization using GIS

ACDIS utilizes the basic functions provided by GIS tools to query and manage the climate resources input, processing and generation of other subsystems. The zoning products under different query conditions is generated as the thematic content of zoning, and then the logical query and management of the vector map are realized, raster map, DEM, annotation and attribute data of zoning products are based on geographical expression, as well as the comprehensive query and management of different maps and attribute data. It outputs the query results to the plotter or printer, or saves them in other formats。

2) Research on the model of small grid computing for climate resources by using GIS

The research on the small grid model of climate resources is a basic work of regionalization. On the basis of collecting climatic research results in mountainous areas and assisting with rainfall data of meteorological sentinels and hydrological stations, the geographic parameters (elevation, aspect and slope) of observation points can be quickly calculated and acquired through GIS platform. By means of statistical analysis, the province is divided into several climatic regions according to the statistical characteristic values and geographical characteristics of the elements. Statistical models for estimating climatic elements in each region are established respectively. Through verification and residual correction, the models are applied to the small grid calculation of climatic resources。

3) Application of GIS in Agricultural Climate Resources Analysis

It is to collect, manage and analyze climate resources by using GIS with spatial characteristics quantitatively, the idea, method and steps of GIS analysis of climate resources are established, including the establishment of digital elevation model, the establishment of GIS agricultural climate resources data, the establishment of spatial analysis model, the analysis and calculation of climate resources, the division of climate and quantitative analysis, etc。

4) Extract background information of agriculture to participate in regionalization calculation by using “3S”

Agroclimatic regionalization is based on the requirements of climatic conditions and the geographical distribution characteristics of climatic resources in the process of crop growth and development. There are different types of land in the climatic plantable area of a certain crop. The different crops require different geographical environment. In order to guide agricultural production more effectively, non-meteorological factors were introduced into agricultural climate regionalization. The PH value of soil is often demanded in agricultural climate regionalization. According to the distribution of soil types, the distribution of soil PH value can be obtained. As a key index of regionalization, the regionalization has more practical significance. Soil classification map is used as a data layer in the operation of climatic resource data layer set by GIS, and the result of regionalization including soil type information is obtained。

In the climatic zoning of high quality early rice planting and the comprehensive zoning of navel orange planting in Wan’an County, Jiangxi Province (Fig. 14-3), besides the application of 1:250,000 geographic data, TM image data and GPS positioning sampling were used to extract the possible planting areas of early rice and navel orange (farmland, barren hill and barren slope), excluding mountains, waters, residential areas, roads and other areas where navel orange and early rice could not be planted. In the region of Wan’an County, the planting plans of high quality early rice and navel orange were obtained by logical intersection of the possible planting areas and the agricultural climate zoning map。

5) Establishing an information service system integrating regionalization, resource dynamic monitoring and high-yield cultivation techniques by using GIS

A Web-based spatial allocation information system of climate resources for Two-line Hybrid Rice Seed production is developed by using GIS tools, which is sensitive to climate conditions. The regionalization will serve the selection of crop production bases, meteorological services for critical growth periods, and technical guidance for agricultural production。