Floods and associated socioeconomic damages in China over the last century

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.