Flood disaster risk and socioeconomy in the Yellow River Basin, China

Abstract

Study region: the Yellow River Basin (YRB) in China. Study focus: Global warming potentially accentuates risks of extreme precipitation and floods that afflict regional socioeconomy. However, spatiotemporally-coupled relations between flood risk and socioeconomic development in the YRB are not properly understood. Here we used the Coupled Coordination Degree Model (CCDM) to evaluate the coupled relationship between flood risk and socioeconomic development in the YRB, China. New hydrological insights for the region: The regions with flood hazard along the mainstream of the YRB and decreasing flood hazard in the direction from southeast to northwest of the YRB, high hazard and higher hazard areas accounted for 10.39%. Meanwhile, overall flood exposure and vulnerability are decreasing from southeast to northwest YRB. Higher socioeconomic restorability highly alleviates the risk of flood disasters in central and northern Shandong, northern Henan, central Shaanxi, southern Shanxi provinces, and parts of Inner Mongolia. Relations between socioeconomic development and flood disaster risk are varying across the YRB. The lower YRB is dominated by developed socioeconomy but higher flood disaster risk. The high socioeconomic exposure and vulnerability of the lower YRB will increase the risk of flood disasters. The “transitional” zone in the middle YRB needs to properly handle the contradiction between economy and flood risk to avoid increased risk. Overall, socioeconomic development has a weak relation with flood disaster risk in the upper YRB.

Keywords

• Flood disaster risk
• Socioeconomic development
• Coupling coordination degree
• Human-land coordination