CollectHomepage AdvertisementContact usMessage

Arid Land Geography ›› 2022, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (3): 695-705.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2021.335

• Climate Change • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Evaluation of drought hazards in Inner Mongolia based on SPEIbase v.2.6 dataset

JIN Ling1(),WANG Yongfang1,2,3(),GUO Enliang1,2,LIU Guixiang3,BAO Yulong1,2   

  1. 1. College of Geographical Science, Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot 010022, Inner Mongolia, China
    2. Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Disaster and Ecological Security on the Mongolian Plateau, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hohhot 010022, Inner Mongolia, China
    3. Grassland Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hohhot 010010, Inner Mongolia, China
  • Received:2021-07-23 Revised:2021-10-29 Online:2022-05-25 Published:2022-05-31
  • Contact: Yongfang WANG E-mail:jinling257@163.com;wangyongfang@imnu.edu.cn

Abstract:

In recent years, drought disasters have occurred frequently in Inner Mongolia, northern China, and losses caused by drought have increased year by year. Understanding the spatial and temporal characteristics of drought, and associated disaster-causing factors, are crucial for early-warning, prevention, and mitigation of future regional drought disasters. This study utilized the comprehensive SPEIbase v.2.6 dataset of precipitation and evapotranspiration from 1949 to 2018 for Inner Mongolia. The spatiotemporal characteristics of drought-related meteorological data were analyzed statistically using Theil-Sen trend analysis and the Mann-Kendall method. Based on the multi-year average intensity of droughts, a weighted comprehensive evaluation model was used to assess the drought hazard at annual and seasonal timescales. Results from Inner Mongolia show a significant downward trend in SPEI-12 (i.e., the SPE index calculated on a 12-month timescale), indicating that the climate of the study area experienced an increasing risk of drought with time. This trend of increasing frequency and degree of drought became particularly pronounced from the start of the 21st century. For the three seasons of spring, summer, and autumn, the climate of the whole of Inner Mongolia shows a significant trend of increasing drought frequency. Data for winter do not show a significant drought trend on an interannual timescale. Spatially, winter data show increasing humidity in the east and a subtle trend of increasing drought in the west. In general, Inner Mongolia can be considered extremely prone to drought disasters: areas ranked with a drought hazard grade of medium and above account for 71% of the total area of the province. The principal areas of high and extremely high drought risk are located in the east of Hulun Buir City and Xilin Gol League. For spring and summer, the spatial distribution of drought hazards in Inner Mongolia shows a pattern of “high in the north and low in the south”. The high-grade hazards lie mainly in the Xilin Gol grassland and the Alxa League. In autumn and winter, the areas of high-grade hazard shrink significantly in size. In winter particularly, low- and extremely low-grade hazards of drought disaster are found in the northeast part of the study area, consistent with the spatial characteristics of the evolving drought trend. In summary, the results of this study can provide a scientific reference for drought disaster risk management in Inner Mongolia. The SPEI index, which integrates the sensitivity of demand for evapotranspiration, is shown to have good applicability in the study area. The SPEIbase v.2.6 dataset used in this study can remove the need for data collection and SPEI calculation, which improves efficiency. In the future, we will consider drought duration and other factors to optimize the model and enhance its predictive capabilities.

Key words: Inner Mongolia, standardized precipitation evaporation index (SPEI), drought, spatiotemporal characteristics, hazard assessment