A comprehensive risk assessment of the main maize agro-meteorological disasters in the three provinces of Northeast China

The three provinces of northeastern China is one of the main maize producing areas in China, and they are also the important provinces consisting of the “northeast maize belt”. The frequent occurrence of maize agro-meteorological disasters in the three provinces of Northeast China under the background of the climate change has seriously threatened the safety in maize production. It is urgent to clarify the risk of main maize agro-meteorological disasters, in order to provide the policy-makers with the reference for copying with the disaster prevention and reduction. The comprehensive risk assessment of main maize agro-meteorological disasters (including chilling disaster, drought disaster and flood and waterlogged disaster) was presented by using the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model in terms of the meteorological data in the three provinces of Northeast China during 1981-2010.The results indicated that the contribution rate of chilling disaster to the comprehensive risk showed decreasing tendency, the contribution rate of drought disaster showed increasing tendency, and the contribution rate of flood and waterlogged disaster presented decreasing tendency before 1991-2000 and increasing tendency after 1991-2000. The average contribution rate of disasters to the comprehensive risk ranged as chilling disaster > drought disaster > flood and waterlogged disaster during 1981-2010. The risk of main maize agro-meteorological disasters decreased from the north to the south, and its high value areas were located at the Greater Khingan Mountains in the three provinces of northeast China.The risks of chilling disaster and flood and waterlogged disaster were the highest in Heilongjiang Province, while they were the lowest in the coastal areas of Jilin Province and Liaoning Province.From 1981 to 2010, the high value areas of the three maize agro-meteorological disaster risks showed obviously decreasing tendency and the low value areas showed significantly increasing tendency.Based on the MaxEnt model, the comprehensive risk assessment model of main maize agro-meteorological disasters was developed for the three provinces of northeast China.The value of area under the curve used for evaluating the simulation accuracy of the developed model reached about 0.823, indicating that the developed model was able to give the better simulation of the comprehensive risk of the main maize agro-meteorological disasters. The comprehensive risk assessment model considered the interactions among a variety of the main agro-meteorological disasters, and it therefore was suitable for giving the comprehensive risk assessment of agro-meteorological disasters for the other crops.