Climate change has a serious impact on the farmers' livelihood depending on the natural resources, especially in the ecologically vulnerable alpine region. So it is urgent for us to search for effective strategies to adapt to climate change. The purpose of this paper is to understand the farmers' adaption strategy selection and the factors determining farmers' strategies to climate change in an ecologically vulnerable alpine region, and toward sustainable management of agriculture and farmers' livelihood. Selecting the Gannan Plateau as the study case, we analyze the climatic trend of Gannan Plateau based on the meteorological data during 1963-2013. Then, through stratified random sampling survey, participatory rural appraisal, 548 households are investigated and sampled. Based on the investigation data, we analyze the impact of climate change on farmers' livelihood, and identify farmers' climate change adaptation strategies from different types of farmers in Gannan Plateau. The multivariable linear regression model and the multivariate logistic model with the aid of SPSS reveal farmers' perception to climate change, and rural household livelihood capital variables significantly determining the adaptation of climate change strategies. The results show: (1) In recent 50 years, the temperature showed an increasing trend, with a linear trend being 0.23 °C/10a,and the precipitation showed a decreasing trend, with a linear trend being- 5.21 mm/10a. Then, 63.45% of farmers believed that climate change have generated great influence on farmers' livelihood. Among them, 52.14% throught that climate change has brought a higher cost of production to farming and husbandry, and 46.73% of the farmers said that climate change has reduced the income of farming and husbandry. (2) The diversification index of farmers' adaptation strategy is 2.65 in this region. Besides, the human capital, natural capital, financial capital and farmers' severity perception, adaption effect perception, self-efficacy perception are positively correlated with the diversification index of adaption strategy.(3) Some 65.30% of the farmers made joint efforts to deal with climate change, and most of them selected the "expansive+accommodating" strategy, and the proportion of the farmers is 30.21%. The most important factor which influences the choices of climate change adaptation strategies is farmers' human capital; farmers' social capital and risk perception come second; the farmers' financial capital and adaptation efficacy perception have the weakest influence. Finally, we propose the measures to reduce the adverse effects of climate change and the suggestions to enhance the farmers' adaptation ability to climate change.