Assessment of physical vulnerability to agricultural drought in China

• Published in: Natural hazards (Dordrecht) Vol. 67; no. 2; pp. 645 - 657
• Main Authors: Wang, Zhiqiang, He, Fei, Fang, Weihua, Liao, Yongfeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agricultural drought; Agricultural policy; Agricultural production; China (People's Republic); Civil Engineering; Climate; Climate change; Climate models; Crop production; Crops; Disaster risk; Disasters; Drought; Droughts; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Engineering and environment geology. Geothermics; Environmental Management; Environmental policy; Environmental risk; Exact sciences and technology; Extreme drought; Farming; Farms; Food; Food security; Food supply; Genetics; Geophysics/Geodesy; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Global warming; Hazards; Hydrogeology; Indexes; Mathematical models; Natural Hazards; Natural hazards: prediction, damages, etc; Original Paper; Prices; Production; Risk; Risk assessment; Rivers; Spring wheat; Water; Water stress; Weather hazards; Wheat; Winter wheat; Shaanxi China; Far East; Asia; Qinling Mountains; China; EPIC model; Drought; Wheat yield; Physical vulnerability assessment; rivers; stress; models; vulnerability; agriculture; duration; global warming; drought; prediction; stability; climate change; policy
• ISSN: 0921-030X; 1573-0840
• DOI: 10.1007/s11069-013-0594-1

Food security has drawn great attention from both researchers and practitioners in recent years. Global warming and its resultant extreme drought events have become a great challenge to crop production and food price stability. This study aimed to establish a preliminary theoretical methodology and an operational approach for assessing the physical vulnerability of two wheat varieties (“Yongliang #4” and “Wenmai #6”) to agricultural drought using Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model (EPIC). Drought hazard index was set up based on output variables of the EPIC water stress (WS), including the magnitude and duration of WS during the crop-growing period. The physical vulnerability curves of two wheat varieties to drought were calculated by the simulated drought hazard indexes and loss ratios. And the curve’s effect on drought disaster risk was defined as A, B and C sections, respectively. Our analysis results showed that (a) physical vulnerability curves varied between two wheat varieties, which were determined by genetic parameters of crops; (b) compared with spring wheat “Yongliang 4#” winter wheat “Wenmai 6#” was less vulnerable to drought under the same drought hazard intensity scenario; (c) the wheat physical vulnerability curve to drought hazard displayed a S shape, suggesting a drought intensity–dependent magnifying or reducing effect of the physical vulnerability on drought disasters; (d) the reducing effect was mainly in the low-value area of vulnerability curve, whereas the magnifying effect was in the middle-value area, and the farming-pastoral zone and the Qinling Mountain–Huaihe River zone formed important spatial division belts.