The effects of past climate change on the northern limits of maize planting in Northeast China

Northeast China (NEC) is one of the major agricultural production areas in China and also an obvious region of climate warming. We were motivated to investigate the impacts of climate warming on the northern limits of maize planting. Additionally, we wanted to assess how spatial shifts in the cropping system impact the maize yields in NEC. To understand these impacts, we used the daily average air temperature data in 72 weather stations and regional experiment yield data from Jilin Province. Averaged across NEC, the annual air temperature increased by 0.38 °C per decade. The annual accumulated temperature above 10 °C (AAT10) followed a similar trend, increased 66 °C d per decade from 1961 to 2007, which caused a northward expansion of the northern limits of maize. The warming enabled early-maturing maize hybrids to be sown in the northern areas of Heilongjiang Province where it was not suitable for growing maize before the warming. In the southern areas of Heilongjiang Province and the eastern areas of Jilin Province, the early-maturing maize hybrids could be replaced by the middle-maturing hybrids with a longer growing season. The maize in the northern areas of Liaoning Province was expected to change from middle-maturing to late-maturing hybrids. Changing the hybrids led to increase the maize yield. When the early-maturing hybrids were replaced by middle-maturing hybrids in Jilin Province, the maize yields would increase by 9.8 %. Similarly, maize yields would increase by 7.1 % when the middle-maturing hybrids were replaced by late-maturing hybrids.