Regional Temporal and Spatial Trends in Drought and Flood Disasters in China and Assessment of Economic Losses in Recent Years
1
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
2
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangdong 510275, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2019, 11(1), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010055
Received: 13 November 2018 / Revised: 15 December 2018 / Accepted: 19 December 2018 / Published: 21 December 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policy)
Understanding the temporal and spatial distribution in disasters plays an important role in disaster risk management. The present study aims to explore the long-term trends in drought and floods over China and estimate the economic losses they cause. A peak-over-threshold approach is used to identify flood peaks, and the relationship between the disasters and climate indices is investigated using Poisson regression. The major results are as follows: (1) the northeastern part of China was severely affected by drought disasters (average damaged area was 6.44 million hectares); (2) the northern part of East China and Central China upstream of the Yangtze River were severely affected by flood disasters (average damaged area was 3.97 million hectares); (3) in the Yangtze River Basin, there are increasing trends in terms of drought and extreme precipitation, especially upstream of the Yangtze River, accompanied by severe disaster losses; and (4) by combining the trends in drought and extreme precipitation days with the spatial distribution of damaged areas, the study indicates that the increasing trend in droughts has shifted gradually from north to south, and the increasing trend in extreme precipitation gradually has shifted from south to north.
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Keywords:
Damaged area; direct economic loss; disaster; drought; extreme precipitation
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MDPI and ACS Style
Chou, J.; Xian, T.; Dong, W.; Xu, Y. Regional Temporal and Spatial Trends in Drought and Flood Disasters in China and Assessment of Economic Losses in Recent Years. Sustainability 2019, 11, 55. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010055
AMA Style
Chou J, Xian T, Dong W, Xu Y. Regional Temporal and Spatial Trends in Drought and Flood Disasters in China and Assessment of Economic Losses in Recent Years. Sustainability. 2019; 11(1):55. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010055
Chicago/Turabian StyleChou, Jieming, Tian Xian, Wenjie Dong, and Yuan Xu. 2019. "Regional Temporal and Spatial Trends in Drought and Flood Disasters in China and Assessment of Economic Losses in Recent Years" Sustainability 11, no. 1: 55. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010055
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