Natural and man-made disasters have been increasing and affecting millions of people throughout the world. Floods are the
most common natural disasters affecting more people across the globe than all other natural or technological disasters and
also are the most costly in terms of human hardship and economic loss. In order to explore the total economic loss, components
of economic loss, and factors influencing economic loss during flooding, a retrospective study was carried out in year 2000
in areas that suffered floods in 1998 in Hunan province, China. A total of 10,722 families were investigated using a multistage
sampling method. We found that the total economic loss to the 10,722 families investigated was US$ 8.925 million; translating
into an average economic loss of US$ 832.45 per family and US$ 216.75 per person. Economic loss related to property loss,
income loss, and increased medical cost accounted for 57.38%, 40.00%, and 2.62% of the total economic loss, respectively.
Economic loss was significantly related to a family’s pre-flood income; duration of the flood; severity of flood; and type
of flood. River floods yielded the highest economic loss and drainage problem floods yielded the lowest loss. We recommended
that flood-related preventive measures should focus on the prevention of river floods and shortening the duration of floods
with the view of significantly minimizing economic losses associated with floods. 相似文献
We in this paper present a multi-proxy study of a 186-cm-long lacustrine sediment core (i.e., BY Core) obtained from the Youerdusi Basin in the middle Tianshan Mountains in an attempt to disentangle the causal associations among climate changes, ecological responses and hydrological variations. Palynological, assemblages and the associated biome scores indicate that the upper limit of the forest zone was closer to the Youerdusi Basin with a larger wetland extent in the Youerdusi Basin during the early part (i.e., from ~ 10.5 to ~ 5.8 cal. kyr BP) of the data-covering period (i.e., from ~ 10.5 to ~ 2.4 cal. kyr BP). The upper limit of the forest zone was farther away from the Youerdusi Basin with a smaller wetland extent in the Youerdusi Basin during the late part (i.e., from ~ 5.8 to ~ 2.4 cal. kyr BP). The changes of taiga biome score and the AP% ratio indicate a persistent cooling trend during the data-covering period which is well corroborated by various proxy data from nearby sites and the cooling trend is chronologically consistent with the trend of Northern Hemisphere temperature anomalies that was interpreted to be a delayed response to the summer solar irradiance at 50° N. The tundra biome score and the associated percentages of Cyperaceae in the Youerdusi Basin show two major stages of wetland extent variation. The wetland extent variation in the Youerdusi Basin might have been controlled by precipitation and/or by glacier-melting potential that was in turn controlled by both temperature and the extent of remained ice cover in higher elevations. The δ13Corg values obtained from the BY Core indicate a wetting trend during the data-covering period which is reasonably corroborated by various proxy data from nearby sites. We infer that the wetting trend was causally associated with the Holocene increasing trend of the North Atlantic Ocean SST (sea surface temperature) and also with the Holocene increasing trend of the westerlies’ intensity.
