Determinants and identification of the northern boundary of China’s tropical zone

doi:10.1007/s11442-018-1457-1

Abstract

Abstract:

The influence of monsoon climatic characteristics makes the tropics of China different from those of other parts of the world. Therefore, the location of the northern boundary of China’s tropical zone has been one of the most controversial issues in the study of comprehensive physical regionalisation in China. This paper introduces developments in the study of the northern boundary of China’s tropical zone, in which different scholars delimit the boundary with great differences based on different regionalisation objectives, indexes, and methods. The main divergence of opinion is found in different understandings of zonal vegetation, agricultural vegetation type, cropping systems, tropical soil type and tropical characteristics. In this study, we applied the GeoDetector model, which measures the spatial stratified heterogeneity, to validate the northern boundaries of the tropical zone delimited by six principal scholars. The results show that the mean q-statistic value of the higher latitude boundary delimited by Ren Mei’e is the largest (q=0.37), suggesting that, of the rival views, it best reflects the regional differences between China’s tropical and subtropical zones, but it is not necessarily suitable for guiding the development of tropical agriculture. The mean values of the q-statistics of Zheng Du’s line and Yu Xianfang’s line around the Leizhou Peninsula at a lower latitude were smaller, at 0.10 and 0.08 respectively, indicating that the regional differences were smaller than those of Ren Mei’e’s boundary. Against the background of global climate change, the climate itself is changing in fluctuation. It is, thus, worth our further research whether the northern boundary of the tropical zone should not be a fixed line but rather should fluctuate within a certain scope to reflect these changes.

Key words: comprehensive physical regionalisation, the northern boundary of the tropical zone, China

Qian XU, Yuxiang DONG, Yuying WANG, Ren YANG, Chengdong XU. Determinants and identification of the northern boundary of China’s tropical zone[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2018, 28(1): 31-45.

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Thermal zone	Region/sub-region		Zone	Province
Tropical zone	Humid region	Eastern sub-region	Tropical monsoon forest and latosol zone	Plain of southern Taiwan and Kaohsiung
				Plain and hilly southern Guangdong
				Plain and hilly Hainan
				Mountains of Hainan
		Western sub-region	Tropical monsoon forest and latosol zone	Basin among mountains of southern Yunnan
Equatorial zone	Humid region		Equatorial rainforest zone	Nansha Islands

Regiona- lisation scheme	Mean temperature of the coldest month	Extreme lowest temperature	≥10°C accumulated temperature	Annual average of monthly mean temperature	Days with daily temperature ≥10°C	Days with daily minimum temperature ≤2°C	Lowest daily mean temperature	Days with daily minimum temperature ≤0°C	Average of q value
Huang’s	0.24	0.20	0.11	0.10	0.10	0.07	0.07	0.05	0.12
Zeng’s	0.11	0.47	0.37	0.37	0.41	0.29	0.35	0.19	0.32
Yu’s	0.05	0.15	0.10	0.09	0.07	0.05	0.09	0.03	0.08
He’s	0.20	0.20	0.15	0.19	0.07	0.19	0.19	0.19	0.17
Ren’s	0.52	0.52	0.34	0.35	0.41	0.30	0.32	0.20	0.37
Zheng’s	0.23	0.16	0.09	0.09	0.07	0.05	0.07	0.03	0.10
Average	0.23	0.28	0.19	0.20	0.19	0.16	0.18	0.12	/
Maximum	0.52	0.52	0.37	0.37	0.41	0.30	0.35	0.20	/