Research On Adaptive Capacity For Different Types Of Farming Households To Drought In Ecologically Vulnerable Area Of Loess Plateau

Global climate change is one of the major challenges that human society facing today,at present,the research on global climate change has risen to the level of national strategic.The Fifth Climate Change Assessment Report of IPCC pointed out that the global average surface temperature has raised by 0.85°C in the past 100 years,and the global temperature will continue to increase over the next 100 years.In recent 100 years,China's climate change trend is consistent with the global climate change trend,and it also shows a clear trend of warming.Many studies show that the global climate change that represented by climate warming has aggravated the fragility of the ecological environment and seriously threatened the sustainable development of the area.Drought is the most widespread natural disaster under the influence of global climate change,which brings great harm to human beings.At present,it has become a hot issue in the field of global climate change and sustainable science.Since the 1970 s,scholars have begun to pay attention to the consequences of climate change bringing to humanity,the direction of how to response the climate change evolved from the prevent and block from the beginning to slow down in the 1980 s,and now generally turn to the adaptation.Therefore,the studies on drought-related adaptability is one of the most important directions in the climate change research.The brittle eco-areas of the Loess Plateau is one of the regions where global climate change focusing on,in the background of global warming,the trend of warming and drying in the region is becoming more and more obvious,which will further aggravate the drought.Long-term drought not only increases the cost of agricultural production,making agricultural production fragile,crop yield low and unstable,and the economic development slow,but also has led to the vulnerability of natural ecological environment,which has seriously affected the development of agricultural and rural and the construction of ecological environm ent,therefore,the paper takes the brittle eco-areas of the Loess Plateau as the study area.Choosing the Yuzhong County as the case area,based on the livelihood characteristics of farming households' survey data,the households were classified into 5 types: subsidy dependent,agriculture-oriented,worker-oriented,concurrent and professional,and summarize the features on selection of adaptation strategies for different types of farming households.Afterwards,according to the evaluation model of adaptive capacity,measured the farmers' adaptive capacity index,evaluated the adaptive capacity to drought for different types of farming households in Yuzhong County.Finally,the obstacle model was used to identify the internal factors that affected the farmers' adaptive capacity;Probit selection model and Poisson regression model were used to analyze the influencing factors of farmers' adaptation strategies.The results show:(1)The types of farming households are diversification,of which the most is workeroriented farmers,the least is professional farmers.(2)The overall stability of farmers' adaptive capacity to drought resistance is poor,and there exist larger internal differences;among the three major indexes,coping capacity is more stable,and the bigger internal differences exist between exposure index and recovering capacity.The stability of different types of farmers' adaptive capacity to drought resistance from high to low is:subsidy-dependent>agriculture-oriented>worker-oriented>concurrent type>professional.(3)There are five major factors that hinder the farmers' adaptive capacity to drought:(drought)economic losses,natural capital,farmers' perception,water-saving irrigation,and social capital,the specific obstacles mainly include that(drought)economic losses,the per capita amount of farmland,plastic film coverage ratio,distance to water sources,farmers' confidence in resisting drought,acceptance of new drought-resistance knowledge,irrigation frequency and rate,neighborhoods' trust,social connectivity and the times of agricultural skills' training.(4)(drought)Economic losses,human capital,financial capital,social capital,water-saving irrigation,and farmers' perception have important influence on the choice of farmers' adaptation strategies.Among them,the(drought)economic loss,male labor force ratio,family dependency ratio,social connectivity,the acceptance of new drought-resistance knowledge and farmers' confidence in drought resistance have a significant impact on the choice of farmers' adaptation strategies.(5)There are different influencing factors about diversity of adaptation strategies for different types of farming households.The(drought)economic loss,male labor force ratio and household dependency ratio have significant effects on the adaptation strategies diversity of subsidies-dependent farming households';the diversity of adaptation strategies for agriculture-oriented farming households is significantly affected by the per capita amount of farmland,the ownership of households' livestock,the times of agricultural skills' training,disaster subsidy,and the acceptance of new drought-resistant knowledge;the per capita amount of farmland,household dependency ratio,the times of agricultural skills' training,and farmers' confidence in resisting drought have great effects on the diversity of adaptation strategies for concurrent farming households;(drought)economic losses,male labor force ratio and social connectivity are the key influencing factors to diversity of adaptation strategies for worker-oriented farming households;the diversity of professional farming households' adaptation strategies is significantly influenced by the average years of education,the ownership of households' livestock,social connectivity,and farmers' confidence in resisting drought.