Authors: Zhang Qiang Han Lanying Lin Jingjing Cheng Qingyan
Publish Date: 2016/12/01
Volume: 131, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 719-732
Abstract
One of the effects of global climate change is increase in the frequency and severity of drought which strongly affects the Chinese agricultural production In order to cope these changes more effectively it is important to document and analyze the agricultural losses caused by drought We collected and analyzed conventional meteorological data and agricultural statistics data in order to outline trends in drought occurrence and decline in agricultural yield Data were assembled for the period 1960–2010 The study pays particular attention to regional differences between northern and southern China Our results show the droughtcaused agricultural loss rates DCALR in China have increased by approximately 05 per decade in the past 50 years The study area in this paper is for the whole of the People’s Republic of China minus the QinghaiTibetan Plateau when we analyzed regional differences we found that losses increased by approximately 06 per decade in northern China close to twice the increase in southern China Moreover drought risks and agricultural losses are rising faster in northern China Our results also indicate that the agriculture in northern China is more sensitive to changes in precipitation whereas the agriculture in southern China is more sensitive to temperature changesWe gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Key Research and Development 973 Program of China 2013CB430206 and the National Natural Science Key Foundation of China 41630426 Q Z wrote the main manuscript text L Y H analyzed the data and created the plots by using the Origin 80 software and maps with Arcmap93 Figs 1 and 8 J J L and Q Y C collected the data and J J Y edited the manuscript All authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript
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