| The Qinghai Tibet Plateau is a sensitive area and promoter region of climate change. It has a prospective significance for the study of regional and global climate change. In addition, it is not only the ecological barrier and "regulator" of climate system, which has tremendous impact on the formation and change of climate pattern of China, but also the “Water Tower” of China, which has a strategic position for water resource security in China. It is significant for ecological security and water resources security of China to reduce the adverse effects of climate change on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau.Through the influence of agricultural ecosystem, family livelihood assets, government policy guidance, the climate change has greatly influenced livelihood strategy choice of farmers. It has been becoming the research hotspot to exploring the interaction mechanism between climate change and adaptation of household, and to guide farmers to use beneficial effect and to avoid adverse effects of climate change. The existing researches mostly explore the guiding role of policy introduction from the macro perspective, but ignore the active feedback microeconomic subject.Household are the most basic micro economic subject and decision making units in rural areas, which can response to climate change through the adjustment of livelihood strategies. Because of the special natural environment and human environment of The Qinghai Tibet Plateau, the livelihood Strategy Choice of household under the influence of climate change has special characteristics. However, due to the lack of field research and typical case studies, it is difficult to accurately grasp the needs of the development of household livelihood, which has affected the country and the government to formulate a reasonable regional policy.The region of Brahmaputra River and its two tributaries in Tibet Autonomous Region(BRTT) is located in Southern Tibetan Plateau, and it is the river valley in middle reaches of The Brahmaputra River and its tributaries(The Lhasa River and The Nyangqu River). This region is not only the center(politics, culture and economy and transportation) of the Qinghai Tibet, but also the typical valley farming and interlacing agro-pastoral region. The economy in this region has developed fast, and more livelihood strategies can be chosen. The influence from climate change is more obvious on livelihood of famers.The study area is interlacing agro-pastoral region in BRTT. Firstly, choosing the village in the edge of agro-pastoral region based on the TM image and agricultural land use maps, which is the most sensitive to climate change. Secondly, the field investigation data was obtained by Participatory Rural Appraisal(PRA) and key informants interview. Thirdly, using the 188 questionnaires was obtained from 18 villages in 16 counties, basing on the classification of livelihood strategies from Sustainable Livelihoods Framework(including agricultural extensification, agricultural intensification, and livelihood diversification). Through the statistical analysis, the livelihood strategies which meet the adaptive choice of household can be screened and identified. Finally, Using the Two-step Clustering to classify the household, and distinguishing the characteristics of regional main livelihood activities and the corresponding strategies.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) The famers in study area can accurately perceive the main meteorological indicators. Such as warmer temperatures, less precipitation, lower air humidity. Natural disasters, such as drought, wind, frost in spring and autumn, are increased. The others, such as rainstorm, blizzard, flood, is decreased.(2) The trend of agricultural extensification in BRTT is not obvious, which is different from other Chinese agriculture planting areas. About 74.46% of the farmers choose not to expand the management of cultivated land, although the global warming is contributed to the development of planting industry in the region of higher altitude and latitudes. The main reason is that the lack of water, the poor of soil texture and the rise of labor opportunity cost.(3) Agricultural intensification is one of the livelihood strategies on the impact of climate change in BRTT. In the household level, the main performance is the increase of investment for planting(irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, seeds and farm machinery) and animal husbandry(feed, prevention of epidemic disease, pens etc.). In the village level, the main performance is the introduced of large agricultural machinery.(4) The trend of livelihood diversification is obvious. There are 60.11% households are engaged in non-agricultural livelihood activities. Otherwise, the transfer of labor force to the two or three industry is the main direction of agricultural livelihood strategy adjustment.(5) Using the TwoStep Cluster(TSC) to classify the household, and to distinguish the characteristics of regional main livelihood activities and the corresponding strategies. The results show that the household can be divided into three categories, type Ⅰ(the type of traditional agricultural production), type Ⅱ(the type of Agricultural intensification), type Ⅲ(the type of livelihood diversification). type Ⅲ makes the biggest percentage as 52.6%, which has the highest non-agricultural income and non-agricultural labor ratio and lower investment of agricultural labor and capital; type Ⅰ,which is the medium proportion, has no non-agricultural income and non-agricultural labor. type Ⅰ, which is the smallest proportion, has highest number of livestock and livestock products family income, and agricultural production inputs is bigger. The livelihood strategy of agricultural extensification is not very common in study area. |
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