Abstract: To clarify the leading climate factors affecting the distribution of single cropping rice planting region in China at national and annual temporal scales and to reveal the potential distribution and climatic suitability divisions of this planting region in China could not only provide scientific basis for optimizing the allocation of single cropping rice production, modifying planting pattern, and introducing fine varieties, but also ensure the food security of China. In this paper, the potential climate factors affecting the single cropping rice distribution in China at regional and annual scales were selected from related literatures, and the single cropping rice geographic information from the national agro-meteorological observation stations of China Meteorological Administration (CMA), together with the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) and spatial analyst function of ArcGIS software, were adopted to clarify the leading climate factors affecting the potential distribution of single cropping rice planting region in China, and to construct a model about the relationships between the potential distribution of the planting region and the climate. The results showed that annual precipitation, moisture index, and days of not less than 18 ℃ stably  were the leading climate factors affecting the potential distribution of single cropping rice planting region in China, with their cumulative contribution rate reached 94.5% of all candidate climate factors. The model constructed in this paper could well simulate the potential distribution of single cropping rice planting region in China. According to the appearance frequency, the low, medium and high climatic suitability divisions of single cropping rice planting region in China were clarified, and the climate characteristics of the planting region in each climatic suitability division were analyzed.

Key words: single cropping rice, potential distribution, climatic suitability, leading climate factor, maximum entropy model (MaxEnt)