Planting regionalization of wine grape in Ningxia using GIS

Based on results of wine grape sampling in mainly growing area of North China, planting regionalization of wine grape in Ningxia was completed by using polygon superposing technique of Geographic Information System(GIS). Climatic data in Ningxia during 1960～2005 at 1∶250000 grid resolution was employed in calculating two-level regionalization indices. The primary regionalization index was water-heat coefficient from July to August, and the secondary regionalization index was accumulation temperature(≥10℃) from July to September. The effects of soil type and irrigation condition were also considered. The results show that Ningxia has high potential of wine grape planting because there is favorable, abundant climatic resource for wine grape production in Ningxia. The area of wine grape growth can be divided into four regions—best-quality, high-quality, suitable, and unsuitable regions. The best-quality region is distributed in sand soil region around Ningxia irrigation area besides east foot of Helan Mountain with total area 1890 km². The high-quality region is mainly distributed in Ningxia plain, east foot of Helan Mountain and Qingshui valley, with total area 20580 km². The high-quality region has rich sunlight-heat resource, large diurnal range of air temperature, and water-heat coefficient less than 1.0. In this region, rainfall is less than 220 mm in growing season, but good irrigation conditions are available. The suitable region is distributed mostly in the arid belt of middle Ningxia and Zhongwei county of Weining Plain with good heat condition and less rainfall. The unsuitable region is located in southern Ningxia with poor heat condition, yearly accumulation temperature(≥10℃) less than 2700℃, and less sunlight.