ALBERT

Description: As an essential component of drought risk, crop-drought vulnerability refers to the degree of the adverse response of a crop to a drought event. Different drought intensities and environments can cause significant differences in crop yield losses. Therefore, quantifying the drought vulnerability and then identifying its spatial distribution pattern will contribute to understanding vulnerability and the development of risk-reduction strategies. We select the European winter wheat growing area as the study area and a 0.5° × 0.5° grid as the basic assessment unit. Winter wheat drought vulnerability curves are established based on the Erosion-Productivity Impact Calculator model simulation. Their loss transmutation and loss extent characteristics are quantitatively analyzed by the key points and cumulative loss rate, respectively, and are then synthetically identified VIA K-means clustering. The results show the following. (1) The regional yield loss rate starts to rapidly increase from 0.13 when the drought index reaches 0.18 and then converts to a relatively stable stage with the value of 0.74 when the drought index reaches 0.66. (2) The stage transitions of the vulnerability curve lag in the southern mountain area, indicating a stronger tolerance to drought in the system, in contrast to the Pod Plain. (3) According to the loss characteristics during the initial, development and attenuation stages, the vulnerability curves can be divided into five clusters, namely, Low-Low-Low, Low-Low-Medium, Medium-Medium-Medium, High-High-High and Low-Medium-High loss types, corresponding to the spatial distribution from low latitude to high latitude and from mountain to plain. It is recommended to improve the integrated mitigation capability in the Medium-Medium-Medium-loss and High-High-High -loss areas and to develop the ability to mitigate droughts in the 0.3–0.6 intensity range, as non-engineering measures for the droughts greater than 0.6 intensity in low-medium-high areas are needed.