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Floods and associated socioeconomic damages in China over the last century

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Abstract

Climate and land-use change increases the probability of heavy rains and flooding. In this study, we present a spatiotemporal evaluation of the changes in floods and associated socioeconomic damage in China over the last century. Results showed that 5–10-year flood were the main problem in flood disasters in China in recent decades. Floods were most common in the Yangtze River basin (27.2 % of all floods), followed by the Huaihe River basin (27, 12.7 %) in twentieth century. The area of agriculture covered and affected by floods exhibited a significant uptrend from 1950 to 2013, and the averages for both of covered area and affected area from 1991 to 2013 reflect a doubling over the averages from 1950 to 1970. A significant downtrend was found in death tolls with the deadliest flood in 1954 (42,447 deaths), and mountain torrents disaster was the main cause of death in recent decades because of the fluctuation of extreme precipitation events. Moreover, due to the combined effects of climate change and rapid urbanization, the risks of flooding increased, which mainly concentrated on the plains along the big rivers such as the Yangtze River, Pearl River and Yellow River, causing an uptrend in direct economic damage in recent years. Results obtained from this study reveal trends and distributions of floods and associated socioeconomic damages in China, which can help to fully understand floods variation.

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Acknowledgments

This study was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41471460, 41501552 and 41130750) and “One Hundred Talents Program” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Weili Duan, Bin He, Guishan Yang, Wen Chen & Huifang Meng

  2. U.S. Agency for International Development, Ghana, West Africa

    Daniel Nover

  3. School of Resource and Safety Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, China

    Jingli Fan

  4. Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Regional Modern Agriculture and Environmental Protection, Huaiyin Normal University, Huaian, 223300, China

    Chuanming Liu

Authors
  1. Weili Duan
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  2. Bin He
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  3. Daniel Nover
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  4. Jingli Fan
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  5. Guishan Yang
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  6. Wen Chen
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  7. Huifang Meng
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  8. Chuanming Liu
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Correspondence to Weili Duan or Bin He.

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Duan, W., He, B., Nover, D. et al. Floods and associated socioeconomic damages in China over the last century. Nat Hazards 82, 401–413 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2207-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-016-2207-2

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