SPATIO-TEMPORAL CHANGE OF DROUGHT DISASTER IN CHINA IN RECENT FIFTY YEARS

In this paper, a drought disaster database, based on information from Chinese provincial newspaper, is established. And the spatio temporal pattern of drought disaster from 1949 to 2000 is reconstructed by using technology of digital mapping. The results show that the spatial pattern of drought disaster takes on discrepancy between the east and west of China, the serious disaster area lies in the north, especially in the west of Heilongjiang, the center of Inner Mongolia, the north of Hebei and Shaanxi, Ningxia; in the south of the country, drought disaster area lies in Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Henan, and Guizhou, the east of Sichuan, the center～east of Yunnan. The distribution of drought disaster in China has the tendency of extension to the west. Dynamic change of drought disaster takes on discrepancy between the south and north of the country. The amount of the drought disaster in the north of the Yangtze River is increasing, while the south is decreasing generally or changing invisibly.