Study On Cognition And Adaptive Behavior Of Herdsmen In Inner Mongolia Pastoral Areas On Climate Change

Climate change has seriously affected animal husbandry in the pastoral area.In the general absence of measures among pastoralists to control the physical environment,they have actively made use of existing methods to adapt to the effect of climate change on the local microclimate and its damage to the means of production of animal husbandry.Pastoralists?cognition and adaptive behavior of climate change and its effect have attracted much attention from the scholars.Research has been done to analyze reasons behind the difference in pastoralists' cognition and adaptive behavior so as to help reduce their reliance on the ecological environment and to promote the sustainable development of animal husbandry in the pastoral area.In this paper,combined with climate data of the researched area over the years and based on door-to-door survey,the author adopted the polygon rule to calculate the comprehensive cognitive indexes of pastoralists;then,with correlation analysis,multiple linear regression model and GIS,the author analyzed characteristics of the spatial-temporal ehanges in hydrothermal conditions,eharacteristics of the spatial distribution of pastoralists?cognition of climate change and its impacts and the spatial distribution and influencing factors of pastoralists5 adaptive behavior in the researched area in the period from 1995 to 2015.The results demonstrated that,with respect to climate conditions,the average temperature in the researched area was on the rise over the years,temperature tendency being 0.37°C/10a;change in mean annual temperature and the warming trend were found similar:Northeast<Middle<Middle West.Annual mean precipitation also presented an upward trend over the years,precipitation tendency being 0.05mm/10a;with respect to annual increase and decrease,the pattern was Northeast>Middle>Middle West;the limit temperature was on the rise.Concerning precipitation in the four seasons,summer precipitation has slightly reduced while the other three seasons were on the rise.Pastoralists5 cognition agreed with the actual situation;influenced by changes in local hydrothermal conditions to varying degrees,spatial difference was found in all kinds of cognition.As for adaptive behavior,pastoralists in the researched area showed rich and effective methods.In terms of factors influencing their adaptive behavior,disaster awareness had the most significant effect among cognitive factors while sex factor played a major role among individual factors.Based on this,the author put forward policy advice to improve the herdsmen's cognition of climate change and the effect climate change has,increase the implementation degree of the herdsmen's adaptive behavior.the author put forward strategies as follows:while the meteorological data of the pasturing area is collected,herdsmen's cognition of climate change should be under long-term follow-up survey;the government of Qi County should increase the frequency of skill training for herdsmen so as to improve the herdsmen's production and management skills,and enrich the herdsmen's means of livelihood;develop the organizational skills of each administrative village,improve the technology's diffusion rate among herdsmen groups;widen the transmission channels of relevant information on climate change to enhance the reliability,authenticity,and accuracy of the information.