Prediction of Future Natural Suitable Areas for Rice under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)

Peng Su, Anyu Zhang, Ran Wang, Jing’ai Wang, Yuan Gao and Fenggui Liu
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Peng Su: School of Geographic Science, Qinghai Normal University, Xining 810008, China
Anyu Zhang: Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Ran Wang: Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Jing’ai Wang: School of Geographic Science, Qinghai Normal University, Xining 810008, China
Yuan Gao: Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Fenggui Liu: School of Geographic Science, Qinghai Normal University, Xining 810008, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: Extreme temperature events, which are part of global climate change, are a growing threat to crop production, especially to such temperature-sensitive crops as rice. As a result, the traditional rice-growing areas are also likely to shift. The MaxEnt model was used for predicting the areas potentially suitable for rice in the short term (2016–2035) and in the medium term (2046–2065) and under two scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 (the intermediate scenario) and RCP 8.5 (sometimes referred to as the worst-case scenario). The predictions, on verification, were seen to be highly accurate: the AUC—area under the curve—value of the MaxEnt model was > 0.85. The model made the following predictions. (1) Areas highly suitable for rice crops will continue to be concentrated mainly in the current major rice-production areas, and areas only marginally suitable will be concentrated mainly in the rainforest region. (2) Overall, although the current pattern of the distribution of such areas would remain more or less unchanged, their extent will mainly decrease in the subtropics but increase in the tropics and in high-latitude regions. (3) The extent of such areas will decrease in the short term but increase in the medium term.

Keywords: global scale; food security; rice potential distribution; MaxEnt; species distribution models (SDMs) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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