Climate Suitability and Vulnerability of Winter Wheat Planting in Gansu under the Background of Global Warming

Winter wheat is the main food crop in China. Gansu Province is a traditional winter wheat growing area, and its planting range is limited by the thermal conditions of winter. The average temperature in Gansu Province increased by 0.28°C per decade, higher than the China’s and global average, and the warming in winter was more obvious. Therefore, it is necessary to study the climate suitability and vulnerability of winter wheat planting in Gansu. In this paper, the maximum entropy model Maxent and Arcgis software are used to select six major climatic factors including annual total radiation, annual precipitation, the warmest monthly average temperature, the coldest monthly average temperature, annual average temperature, and annual extreme minimum temperature, which construct winter wheat planting distribution-climate relationship model that studies the climate suitability and vulnerability of winter wheat during the period 1961-2015. Studies have shown that the average cold weather and annual extreme minimum temperature are the most important climatic factors affecting winter wheat in Gansu, which can reflect the low temperature conditions that winter wheat can tolerate. However, the main winter wheat planting areas in Gansu Province are distributed in arid and semi-arid rain-fed agriculture areas. Precipitation and total annual radiation are also very important constraints. At the same time, climate change has little effect on winter wheat in Gansu Province, and the area of suitable area fluctuates slightly. It shows moderate adaptation in each evaluation period.