title: Impact assessment of recent climate change on rice yields in the Heilongjiang Reclamation Area of north-east China.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Investigating the degree to which climate change may have impacted on rice yields can provide an insight into how to adapt to climate change in the future. Meteorological and rice yield data over the period 1960-2009 from the Heilongjiang Reclamation Area of north-east China (HRANC) were used to explore the possible impacts of climate change on rice yields at sub-regional scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results showed that a warming trend was obvious in the HRANC and discernible climate fluctuations and yield variations on inter-annual scale were detected to have occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. Statistically positive correlation was observed between growing season temperature and rice yields, with an increase rate by approximately 3.60% for each 1°C rise in the minimum temperature during growing season. Such findings are consistent with the current mainstream view that warming climate may exert positive impacts on crop yields in the middle and higher latitude regions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study indicated that the growing season minimum temperature was a major driver of all the climatic factors to the recent increase trends in rice yield in HRANC over the last five decades.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China; Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Ministry of Civil Affairs and Ministry of Education, Beijing, 100875, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Guanpeng
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Wenxiang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000266:history*; D002681:China; D057231:Climate Change; D052918:Environmental Restoration and Remediation; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D012275:Oryza / Q000502:physiology*; D013696:Temperature; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: change-point detection; climate change; impact assessment; rice yield; trend analysis