Spring Corn Climate Suitability Zoning And Drought Risk Assessment Of Northwest In China

Corn is one of the major food crops in China.The Northwest China, with flat terrain, dry climate, abundant light and heat resources and irradiant condition, has exceptionally natural advantage in the corn planing. The drought is the major natural disaster in the Northwest and take huge damage to the economic of Northwest, especially the most obvious harm to the agriculture. Therefore, it has very important significance on the corn planting to develop suitability zoning and drought risk assessment of spring corn in the Northwest. In this paper, the Northwest region is divided into irrigated and non-irrigated areas by using remote sensing data and geographic information data, and the suitability zoning of spring corn planting is developed by fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method on the GIS platform. The drought risk assessment of spring corn in the Northwest(take Ningxia as example)carried out from four aspects, the risk of hazard factors, the vulnerability of hazard bearing body, the sensitivity of the hazard inducing environment, and the disaster resistant ability.The spring corn drought risk zoning in the Northwest(take Ningxia as exampleis developed by using the existed drought risk assessment model. In this paper, the conclusions can be summarized as follows depend on the above study.(1)In the spring corn climatic zoning without considering irrigation conditions the most suitable areas are concentrated in the southern Shanxi, such as Hanzhong, Ankang, Shiquan, Shangzhou, and so on. Suitable areas are mainly located in the western, central and northern regions of Shaanxi, southern and eastern regions of Gansu, southeastern regions of Qinghai, and central region of Xinjiang, Sub-suitable areas include central drought regions of Ningxia, central Gansu, central and eastern regions of Qinghai, central and southern regions of Xinjiang. Unsuitable areas concentrated in most regions of Xinjiang, northwestern Qinghai, the Hexi Corridor in Gansu and Yellow River Irrigation District in Ningxia.(2) Under the considering irrigation conditions, the most suitable planting area of spring corn expanded significantly in the Northwest, and the increase part of the most suitable areas include Yellow River Irrigation District of Ningxia, Hexi Corridor of Gansu western and northern regions of Xinjiang. The most suitable areas of Shaanxi expands from south to north, and has the most concentrated increasing regions. The most suitable planting area did not increase only in Qinghai Province. It should be due to insufficient heat conditions becaused of its high altitude.(3) In Ningxia, the drought risk distribution trend of spring corn became gradually increase from north to south, the lower risk areas are concentrated in the regions of Yellow River Irrigation District, Da Wukou, Ping Luo, Tao Le etc. Although these regions have less precipitation, but its superior irrigation conditions played an important role in resisting drought. The central Ningxia regions belongs to the sub-low and medium risk areas. The south mountain areas of Ningxia are the hardest disaster areas of drought, which is a special heavy-risk areas in Xiji. The Longde has the rather lower drought risk, and the other regions such as Guyuan, Jingyuan belong to the hige-risk area,especially the Xiji belongs to the extra hige-risk area.