In this paper, we analyzed drought and flood data in the historical period in the western part of Honan Province, and reconstructed seasonal drought and flood sequences (spring, summer and autumn) from 1470 to 1979. In order to inspect the reliability and reasonableness of the sequences, we must know the characteristics of droughts and floods for the recent decades in this area,so that the sequences on the basis of historical documents may be compared with the sequences from instrmental data. The reconstructing seasonal drought and flood sequences were tested by method of x2.The analyses indicate that droughts occur frequently in the studied area especially in spring and summer. The spring drought and the summer drought always occur in succession, such cases occurred 91 times in the 510 years, on some severely drought years, droughts persisted from spring to autumn. The frequency of droughts is larger than that of floods in the seasons of spring and summer, but inversely in autumn.From the analysis of the time variation of the variability of drought/flood, it is easy to find, that there is significant fluctuation in every season. In general, in the first half of this centur y, drought and flood occurred frequently in each season.This paper suggests that in some districts, if historical documents are abundante and in detail, the reconstruction of seasonal drought and flood sequences is possible for the last 500 years.
Feng Liwen, Zheng Sizhong
. AN EXPERIMENT OF RECONSTRUCTING SEASONAL DROUGHT AND FLOOD SEQUENCES FOR THE LAST 500 YEARS IN THE WESTERN PART OF HONAN PROVINCE[J]. GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH, 1985
, 4(4)
: 55
-61
.
DOI: 10.11821/yj1985040007