Abstract
How agriculture can better adapt to climate change has been a key topic of interest for scholars. This study provides insights from the eastern agricultural region of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). The Yellow River-Huangshui River valley (YHV) is an important food-producing region on the TP. The agricultural production of small households has been affected by significant climate change and by a series of interventions on the part of the local government. Five main adaptation strategies adopted by households include crop rotation (86.71%), increasing agricultural inputs (74.21%), changing the sowing time of crops (61.51%), expanding cropland area (32.94%) and raising more livestock (16.27%) to adapt to the effects of climate change. Regression analysis revealed that households’ perceptions of climate change and five types of livelihood capital are important factors influencing their adoption of various livelihood strategies. In addition, the adaptation strategies used by households in the YHV are incremental adjustments to their existing production, while transformative adaptation strategies (e.g., irrigation facilities, improved crop varieties, agricultural insurance), which are larger in scale and could fundamentally reduce households’ vulnerability to climate change have been planned by the government. Due to the presence of government interventions, households in the YHV area are more proactive in adapting to climate change. Finally, the results of this paper are conducive to guiding the local government to enhance its intervention role to promote households’ climate change adaptation behavior.
The adaptation strategies of Herpetospermum pedunculosum (Ser.) Baill at altitude gradient of the Tibetan plateau by physiological and metabolomic methods
