Risk assessment of agricultural drought using the CERES-Wheat model: a case study of Henan Plain, China

Abstract

Droughts caused by a lack of precipitation are one of the major factors limiting agricultural crop production. It is thus important to assess the risk of such droughts in order to reduce their effect on agriculture. In the present study, the drought risk for crop production was assessed through an integrated approach that analyzed the relationship between crop yield and drought on the Henan Plain, China. We used the calibrated CERES-Wheat model to simulate 2 levels of wheat yield, the yield potential and the water-limited yield potential, at 66 weather stations. The yield gap between the yield potential and the water-limited yield potential was used as an indicator of the effects of a precipitation deficit on crop production under rain-fed conditions. A strong linear relationship between the yield gap and the amount of precipitation in the growing season was observed for each station during the period 1962−2009. A uniform criterion for drought severity thresholds for the entire Henan Plain was constructed based on the yield gap. For each station, the growing-season precipitation thresholds associated with different drought severities were then calculated based on the linear relationship between the yield gap and the amount of precipitation in the growing season. Drought frequencies derived from changes in the amount of precipitation during the growing season were also examined for all stations and spatially interpolated over the plain. The results showed diverse spatial patterns of frequency with respect to different drought types. Light droughts often occurred in the southern region, and moderate droughts occurred more frequently in the western and eastern regions. Severe drought displayed a generally decreasing trend from north to south.

Geospatial analysis of agricultural drought vulnerability using a composite index based on exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity

“…Ahsan and Warner [16] developed socioeconomic vulnerability index and opined that in the absence of direct methods of validation of such composite index, selection of indicators and assignment of weights are the strongest determinants of the composite index. Zhao et al [45] and Boubcar [46] revealed the agreement between drought occurrence and crop yield changes. Taking clue from these studies, we have followed an indirect approach for validation of the present vulnerability map by showing an empirical evidence on crop yield variability of major crops in different vulnerability classes.…”

Crop insurance demand in wheat production: focusing on yield gaps and asymmetric information

“…CERES-Wheat has been widely applied at the regional scale (e.g. Bannayan et al, 2003;Zhao et al, 2011) and preferred for the simulation of winter wheat growth at field scale in semi-arid conditions in Spain after a detailed comparison (Castañeda-Vera et al, 2015).…”

Effects of climate change on cultivation patterns of spring maize and its climatic suitability in Northeast China

“…Air temperatures in this region are estimated to have increased over the past 50 years, with a rate of 0.38 C per decade. These large increases in temperature are thought to have considerable impacts on the agricultural climatic resources (Walker and Schulze, 2008;Zhao et al, 2010;Chen et al, 2011;Yuan et al, 2012;Guo et al, 2013), maize growth and harvest (Tao et al, 2008;Chen et al, 2011), crop yield (Wolf and Van Diepen, 1995;Jones and Thornton, 2003;Tao and Zhang, 2010;Zhao et al, 2011), and northern planting limits (Liu et al, 2013;Zhao and Guo, 2013). For example, Guo et al (2013) predicted the effects of climate change on the agricultural climatic resource utilization from 1951 to 2100, using the high-resolution RegCM3 (0.25 Â 0.25 ) daily data.…”