Climate adaptation through crop migration requires a nexus perspective for environmental sustainability in the North China Plain

Crop migration can moderate the impacts of global warming on crop production, but its feedback on the climate and environment remains unknown. Here we develop an integrated framework to capture the climate impacts and the feedback of adaptation behaviours with the land–water–energy–carbon nexus perspective and identify opportunities to achieve the synergies between climate adaptation and environmental sustainability. We apply the framework to assess wheat and maize migration in the North China Plain and show that adaptation through wheat migration could increase crop production by ~18.5% in the 2050s, but at the cost of disproportional increment in land use (~19.2%), water use (~20.2%), energy use (~19.5%) and carbon emissions (~19.9%). Irrigation and fertilization management are critical mitigation opportunities in the framework, through which wheat migration can be optimized to reduce the climatic and environmental impacts and avoid potential carbon leakage. Our work highlights the sustainable climate adaptation to mitigate negative environmental externalities. This study reveals that wheat migration as a strategy for climate adaptation lacks sustainability in the North China Plain. Irrigation and fertilization management provide mitigation opportunities to reduce negative environmental impacts and avoid carbon leakage.