Bin He¹, Jianjun Wu², Aifeng Lv³, Xuefeng Cui¹, Lei Zhou⁴, Ming Liu², Lin Zhao²

¹ State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Academy of College of Global Change and Earth System, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;

² Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Ministry of Civil Affairs and Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;

³ Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;

⁴ China National Environmental Monitoring Center, Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing 100012, China.

 

Abstract: Based on the natural disaster analysis theory, the spatial characteristics of agricultural drought risk in China were investigated at 10 × 10 km grid scale. It shows that agricultural drought risk in China has a clear southeast–northwest spatial pattern. High and very high risk mainly occur in the eastern part of Northeast Plain, the central of Inner Mongolian Plateau, the Loess Plateau, north Xinjiang, the north and south of Yangtze Plain, and Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Statistics also show that 19.5 % of the main crop planting area is exposed to low risk, 35.1 % of the area to moderate risk, 39.8 % of the area to high risk, and 5.6 % of the area to very high risk. Further investigation shows that 23 % of total wheat growing areas is located in high and very high risk class; corn and rice are 16 % and 14 % respectively. Comprehensive analysis shows that severely affected areas by drought in the history are mainly located in the high and very high risk areas.

 

Keywords: Agricultural drought; Risk assessment; Spatial characters.