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Analysis of meteorological dryness/wetness features for spring wheat production in the Ili River basin, China

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Abstract

Understanding the impacts of climate change on crop yield is important for improving crop growth and yield formation in northwestern China. In this study, we evaluated the relationship between meteorological dryness/wetness conditions and spring wheat yield in the Ili river basin (IRB). The climate and yield data from 1961 to 2013 were collected to analyze characteristics and correlations between these two variables using the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), yield detrending method, modified Mann-Kendall test and Spearman correlation analysis. Main results were as follows: (1) correlations between monthly SPEI values (MSV) and climatic yield of spring wheat indicated that the dryness/wetness condition in May was a key factor affecting yield in the whole region; (2) although the MSV in May and yield fluctuated from negative to positive values in time, the severely and extremely dryness events were in good agreement with the higher yield losses; (3) each increase of 0.5 MSV in May promoted over 3% increase of yield in most part of IRB; however, the larger variability of MSV in May resulted in larger yield fluctuations; and (4) the Tibetan Plateau index in April showed significant correlations with the MSV in May and yield, which provided a precursory signal for decision-makers to better understand potential yield fluctuations.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Strategic Priority Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20030101-02), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu, China (BK20180939), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41801013, 31500388),National Key Technologies R & D Program of China (2012BAD16B0305), Clean Development Mechanism Fund of China (2013013), and the Startup Foundation for introducing Talent of Yangzhou University (137011343).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, 225009, China

    Cheng Li, Jianxiang Xu & Yunjian Luo

  2. School of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Cheng Li, Ranghui Wang & Yelin Jiang

  3. Geoscience and Digital Earth Centre, Research Institute for Sustainable Environment, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

    Mou Leong Tan

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  1. Cheng Li
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  2. Ranghui Wang
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  3. Jianxiang Xu
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  4. Yunjian Luo
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Correspondence to Cheng Li.

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Li, C., Wang, R., Xu, J. et al. Analysis of meteorological dryness/wetness features for spring wheat production in the Ili River basin, China. Int J Biometeorol 62, 2197–2204 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-018-1623-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-018-1623-2

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