Agricultural drought mitigation performance in

major producing regions of staple crops

Bingfang Wu
Professor, Ph. D

Youth forum on innovative geospatial information application, 30 Jan – 1 Feb 2024, MFU, Chiang Rai
 Drought and impacts
Drought directly affect agricultural production through its effects on
photosynthesis, causing heavy agricultural losses.
– The annual average losses in the Asia Pacific region due to agricultural drought reach
$404 billion, which is approximately 1.4% of the region's GDP (UNESCAP, 2019).
– The annual economic losses caused by drought reached $7 billion per year from 1984
to 2017 in China (Su, et al. 2018)
– The U.S. drought of 2012 caused a maize yield reduction of 21%, and prices increased
53% compared to the previous 5 year average yield and price. (Boyer et al. 2013)
– Harvested areas reduced 4.1% due to droughts at global average (Lesk, et al. 2016).
 Anti-drought measures

Many anti-drought measures are explored to mitigate drought impacts:

– irrigation practices,
– use of drought-tolerant varieties,
– crop intensity adjustments,
– agricultural water conservation methods (mulching and ridges),
– irrigation modernization, such as drip irrigation.
– water flow meter installment
– surface water storage
– groundwater pricing strategy
– Harvesting water from rain and air
 Irrigation alleviates drought impacts

◼ Improves crop yield

– Irrigation stabilized the climate extremes and variability.

◼ Increases crop water productivity

– Irrigation can reduce the average yield variability of all nine crops by 41% relative to
rainfed yields in USA higher plateau plain.

◼ Offsets drought impacts

– Irrigation shifts the negative affecting threshold of crops from drought and mitigates
drying spells.

But the impacts of other anti-drought measures, particularly

their combination are unknown.
 Drought type

Drought has been defined as meteorological drought,

agricultural drought and socioeconomic drought, etc.
– Meteorological drought is defined as precipitation deficiency,
reflects changes in precipitation caused by climate variation.
– Meteorological drought indices are derived from precipitation,
potential evapotranspiration such as PDSI, SPI and SPEI,
– Agricultural drought is defined as moisture deficiency in
vegetation roots, reflects the vegetation health condition.
– Agricultural drought indices are derived from soil moisture and
remote sensing vegetation indices such as VHI, VCI and SMADI.
 Meteor. drought Indices

• AI - Aridity Index
• API - Anomaly Precipitation Index
• DAI - Drought Area Index
• DSI - Drought Severity Index • Based on water balance, PDSI
• EDI - Effective Drought Index describes soil moisture
Meteor. • KBDI - Keetch-Byram drought index variability driven by climate, the
• PDSI - Palmer Drought Severity Index impacts of human activities are
Data • RD- Rainfall Deciles not considered.
• RDI - Reconnaissance Drought Index
• PDSI reflects natural
• SPI - Standardized Precipitation Index
agricultural drought
• SPEI - Standardized Precipitation
Evapotranspiration Index
• Z index - Palmer Moisture Anomaly Index
• ……
 Agri drought Indices
• CWSI-Crop Water Stress Index
• RDRI –Remote Sensing Drought Risk Index
• NDVI –Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
• NDVIA –Anomaly of NDVI
• NDWI –Normalized Difference Water Index
• NDII –Normalized Difference Infrared Index • VHI is based on remote
• SVI –Standardized Vegetation Index sensing and directly
• LWCI –Leaf Water Content Index
Remote • SRWI –Simple Ratio Water Index monitors crop stress,
• VCI –Vegetation Condition Index reflecting the impact of
sensing •
•
TCI –Temperature Condition Index
VHI –Vegetation Health Index human activities.
• GVWI –Global Vegetation Water moisture Index
• VTCI-Vegetation Temperature Condition Index
• VHI represent actual
• VCADI –Vegetation Condition AlbedoDrought agricultural drought
Index
• PDI –Perpendicular Drought Index
• MPDI –Modified Perpendicular Drought Index
• NMDI – Normalized Multi-Band Drought Index
• VegDRI–Vegetation Drought Response Index
• ……
 Variations and changes of PDSI and VHI
Temporal variations of PDSI and VHI:
– Among the six provinces in NCP and NEC, PDSI and VHI temporal value changes are
different, due to different anti-drought measures.
– According to PDSI, Hebei is the most drought-prone province. The differences in VHI
values of Hebei spring and summer are much higher than PDSI differences, which implies
human activity in drought mitigation.

Study area: NCP and NEC

Time series of PDSI and VHI in NCP and NEC
 Difference of PDSI and VHI

• At decade level, drought frequency of

PDSI and VHI differ in six provinces.
• PDSI drought is large coverage and PDSI

high in frequency.
– NCP has much higher drought frequency than
NEC, indicating high meteorological drought.

• VHI drought frequency is relatively

lower and the spatial distribution is
homogeneous. VHI
– High frequency mainly occurred in the
marginal area of NCP, which are sloping and
hilly areas, indicating low actual agricultural
drought.
Decade drought frequency
 Agricultural drought mitigation indices
◼ Agricultural drought occurrence frequency change (ADFC) and agricultural
drought affected area changes (ADAC) are developed.

◼ Lower ADFC and ADAC values represent higher drought mitigation effects.

𝐴𝐷𝐹𝐶𝑖 = f(𝑉𝐻𝐼𝑖 < β) − f(PDSI𝑖 < α)

𝐴𝐷𝐴𝐶𝑖 = PA(𝑉𝐻𝐼𝑖 < β) − PA(PDSI𝑖 < α)

i is the growing seasons. α is the threshold of PDSI drought, β is

the threshold of VHI drought. Only one group of drought
severity is considered, with out further divided into mild,
moderate, serious groups.

Wu B, Ma Z, Yan N. Agricultural drought mitigating indices derived from the changes in drought characteristics.
Remote Sensing of Environment 2020; 244: 111813.
 Thresholds of PDSI and VHI

◼ Agricultural drought conditions:

– PDSI describes the agricultural drought under natural
conditions.
– VHI describes the actual agricultural drought with human
activities.

◼ In rainfed cropland, PDSI and VHI present similar

area percentage as there is no irrigation activity or
human intervention. Determination of PDSI and VHI drought
– Heilongjiang has the lowest rainfed cropland area.
– The drought threshold of PDSI and VHI can be unified in
Heilongjiang for consistent analyses.
 ADAC vs anti-drought measures

◼ Correlation between annual ADAC

and anti-drought measures :
– provincial irrigation area
– reservoir capacity
– agricultural plastic usage
◼ ADAC has high correlation with
irrigation area and agricultural
plastic usage. Relationship between ADAC and anti-drought measures
– Henan agricultural plastic usage
increased from <30,000 tons in
1990s to >140,000 tons in 2010s,
highly correlated with ADAC.

Temporal variation of ADAC and anti-drought measures

 ADAC vs yield variation

16 maize MPRs 12 Rice MPRs

12 wheat MPRs 5 soybean MPRs

Wu, B., et al. Agricultural Water Management, 2022, 273

 Drought mitigation for maize MPRs
◼ Meteorological drought is mitigated in 57% of maize-growing areas globally during 1980-2022
◼ In European MPRs, drought mitigation performance was significant in France, Ukraine, Romania, and
Russia
➢ Russia 2010 drought led to significant maize production reduction
➢ France cultivated early-maturing maize varieties to shorten the maize growth period for mitigating the impacts of
summer heat and drought

◼ In African MPRs, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa have all suffered from prolonged severe droughts.

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Drought mitigation for maize MPRs

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Drought mitigation for rice MPRs

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Drought mitigation for rice MPRs

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Drought mitigation for wheat MPRs

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Drought mitigation for wheat MPRs

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Drought mitigation for soybean MPRs

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Drought mitigation for soybean MPRs

Meteorological drought area Agricultural drought mitigation

 Conclusion

◼ The drought mitigation performance of global staple crop production

areas has improved significantly since 1980s.
◼ Measures such as irrigation, mulching, conservation tillage and drought-
resistant varieties have mitigated the adverse effects of drought on food
production.
◼ Drought mitigation is significant in countries such as China, France, India
and Ukraine, while the drought mitigation of Africa, America and
Australia's MPRs needs to be further improved.
◼ Anti-drought measures vary across regions and countries, which one or
their combination works needs further assessment
 Thank you！
Contacts:
[email protected] Aerospace Information Research Institute(AIR)
[email protected] Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS)

www.aircas.ac.cn