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Analysis of ecological drought risk characteristics and leading factors in the Yellow River Basin

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Abstract

With the increasing number and intensity of drought events, understanding the ecological drought risk in the Yellow River Basin has become an important prerequisite for ecological protection in the basin. Based on the climate, environment, and human activities in the Yellow River Basin, this study constructed the ecological drought risk evaluation index system and model, revealed the spatial distribution characteristics of risk, and analyzed the dominant factors responsible for ecological drought risk through the bivariate local Moran’s I index and an optimal parameter-based geographic detector (OPGD)-based model. The results show that the high-risk areas of ecological drought are mainly located on the northern Shaanxi Plateau, the central Gansu Plateau, the Ningxia Plain, and the Hetao Plain (except for irrigated areas). From the perspective of land-use types, the ecological drought risk from high to low was wasteland, grassland, woodland, farmland, and town areas. High-risk areas accounted for 20.30% of the total watershed area. Through spatial correlation analysis, it was found that the upper reaches were affected by both surface temperature and precipitation, whereas the Guanzhong Basin and lower reaches were mainly affected by precipitation only. The dominant factors associated with vulnerability and sensitivity were precipitation utilization efficiency and fractional vegetation coverage, respectively. Hazard is the dominant factor leading to regional differences in ecological drought risk, and vulnerability, sensitivity, and exposure can alter the local characteristics of the spatial distribution of ecological drought risk.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available, reference Table 1.

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Funding

This work was supported by the NSFC (Key project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China) (Grant number 42230611), the Gansu Basic Research Innovation Group (Grant number 20JR5RA121), Natural Science Foundation of Gansu Province (Grant number 21JR7RA696), and the Innovation Team Project of the Institute of Arid Meteorology (Grant number GHSCXTD-2020–2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Arid Climatic Change and Reducing Disaster of Gansu Province, Key Open Laboratory of Arid Change and Disaster Reduction of CMA, Institute of Arid Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration, Lanzhou, 730020, Gansu, China

    Ying Wang & Jianshun Wang

  2. Gansu Meteorological Bureau, Lanzhou, 730020, Gansu, China

    Qiang Zhang

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  1. Ying Wang
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Ying Wang and Jianshun Wang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ying Wang and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qiang Zhang.

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Wang, Y., Wang, J. & Zhang, Q. Analysis of ecological drought risk characteristics and leading factors in the Yellow River Basin. Theor Appl Climatol 155, 1739–1757 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04720-w

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