Regional Assessment of Sustainable Agricultural Cropping Systems in the North China Plain - Data Requirements and Computational Approaches

Cellular automata and the DSSAT crop model are used to regionalize site specific information of winter wheat and maize in the North China Plain (NCP). On the basis of the spatial explicit IRTG (1st Sino-German International Research Training Group) geographic database AEIS (Agro-Environmental Information System) on climate, soils, crops, agricultural management and sociological data these two different modeling approaches are used to simulate the status quo. For the evaluation of reliable future scenarios simulations with both types will be performed. The AEIS was initially established on 2 study sites on 2 different research scales. Based on these databases simulations of different fertilization scenarios have been conducted. Results depicts that there are prospects for sustainable agricultural management as well as high production levels.