Herders’ Perception And Adaptation To Climate Change And Meteorological Disaster In Northern Grassland Of China

The implement of grassland contract responsibility system altered the management pattern innorthern grassland of China which continuous thousands of years, and family ranch became the basicunit of grassland utilization and protection. At the background of climate change adaptation became ahot and frontier domains, it had a large scientific and practical significance to research the responds ofherders’ management process to climate change. Based on the theory of agro-grassland ecosystem andperception–adaptation framework, we used participatory farmer method and meteorological data toresearch herders’ perception and adaptation to climate change in northern grassland of China. Theresults showed that:(1) The climate had undergone a significant change during1980-2009in northern grassland ofChina. The variability were0.63℃/10a(R~2=0.58, P<0.01) and0.51℃/10a(R~2=0.31, P<0.01) in InnerMongolia and Xinjiang region respectively. And there was a synchronicity character of temperaturechange in different region. However, there was the opposite direction of precipitation change in InnerMongolia (-8.48mm/10a, P>0.05) and Xinjiang (+5.02mm/10a, P>0.05).(2) Herders’ in different regions had a similar perception (χ~2=13.33, P=0.21) to precipitationdecreasing compared with actual climate change. However, there was a significant regionaldifferentiation (χ~2=27.19, P=0.02) of herders’ perception to temperature increasing in past decades.Hence there was a bias phenomenal of herders’ perception to climate change. The most sensitive seasonwas summer of herders’ perception to drought. And season scale had the highest explanatory power inthe scale of year, season and month. Based on these phenomenal, we proposed the hypothesis ofconduction perception. Further, we found that precipitation but temperature perception had thecharacteristic of conductivity. And precipitation and temperature perception were “excessive stressperception” and “deficit stress perception”.(3) The extreme events mainly included drought (84.30%) was the key factor of climate changeimpact to herders’ management via the medium factors of livestock (92.55%) and pasture (88.74%).Buying forage (livestock protection) and selling livestock (livestock reducing) were the mainly respondstrategies of herders. Comparatively, the strategy of livestock protection (88.27%) was more commonthan livestock reducing. Pasture and livestock were two key factors of familial ranchland managementsystem to climate change in the process of functional feedback.(4) Contrary to scientific research results, most of the respondents (93.38%) indicted thatprecipitation reducing was the mainly (43.05%) or the only (50.33%) reason which cased grasslanddegradation. Although the bias of herders’ perception to grassland degradation and climate change,herders’ management such as the time of selling, livestock structure, the model of forage supply had aadjustment to adaptive to climate and their pasture change. The lambing time had an ahead of25days approximately. Lambing concentrated period of-4℃line had an ahead of10d approximately. Soclimate warming played an important role to prompt the ahead of lambing time, which was beneficial tothe adjustment of one year livestock production cycle (R~2=0.43, P<0.01).(5) Our research indicted that familial ranchland management system which include climate,pasture, livestock, management and other factors was the basic unit of agro-grassland system. Themainly process of familial ranchland system was operator adjusted the relationship between livestockand forage resources by climate fluctuate at the principle of economy and ecology. Via functionalfeedback, herders adjusted the matter and energy balance between forage and animal, which caused thehighest production and the least risk. Human were the key adjust factor, and environment perceptionwas an important information basic of the information of adaptive strategy to climate change.