Assessment of agricultural drought vulnerability to climate change at a municipal level in South Korea

This study aimed to analyze the future vulnerability to agricultural drought of the Korean administrative units of cities (Si) and counties (Gun) following the climate change phenomenon. To assess the vulnerability in a quantitative manner and also to deal with different physical and socioeconomic data on the occurrence of agricultural drought, principal component analysis (PCA), a multivariate statistical analysis method, was adopted, and a vulnerability index, regional vulnerability index to agricultural drought (RVIAD), was suggested. RVIAD having a range from 0.0 to 1.0 was calculated by rescaling the weighted summation of principal component scores. The analysis was performed with all 21 standardized variables in each administrative unit of Si and Gun: 3 sensitivity variables, 8 exposure variables, and 10 adaptation variables. It resulted in four principal components explaining about 85.7% of the total variance, and the third principal component, comprised of only climate variables, was used for applying future climate data from the RCP 8.5 scenario. The districts of Chungchongnam-Do (M1), Jeollabuk-Do (L1), and Jeollanam-Do (L2) were evaluated as having the highest vulnerability to agricultural drought based on the climate change scenario, not only in the present but also in future. Despite the limitation inherent in the PCA, the approach in this study could reflect different factors other than climate factors on minimizing subjective interruption, and such is expected to contribute to improving the decision-making for diagnosing the drought adaptation capacity in a region and developing measures to mitigate the drought damage.