Climate Change Vulnerability of Agriculture in Coastal Communes of Quang Tri Province, Vietnam

Abstract

Due to its long coastline, Vietnam is regarded as the country that is seriously influenced by climate change. When the sea level increases by 1 meter, 40% area of the Mekong Delta and 10% area of the Red River Delta will be deluged, and this means that life of 20–30 million people will be promptly affected. Particularly, in Quang Tri Province, the coastal area is the place where people mainly live on agriculture and the climate change has made serious impacts on their life. Applying GIS and remote sensing allows the evaluation of the vulnerability of agricultural production activities in coastal communes in Quang Tri Province to be more effective. The research process has found the sensitivity index (S—sensitivity) (namely the index of traffic access, the effects of residential areas, the effects of industrial zones, the community dependence level), exposure index (E—exposure) (including sea-level rise until 2100; temperature change until 2100), and adaptive capacity index (AC—adaptive capacity) (including slope index; morphology), and afterward, summarizing the index of vulnerability due to the influences of climate change on agricultural production (V-vulnerability to climate change).