Impacts of droughts and floods on croplands and crop production in Southeast Asia - An application of Google Earth Engine

Abstract

While droughts and floods have intensified in recent years, only a handful of studies have assessed their impacts on croplands and production in Southeast Asia. Here, we used the Google Earth Engine to assess the droughts and floods and their impacts on croplands and crop production over 40 years from 1980 to 2019. Using the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) as the basis for determining the drought and flood levels, and crop damage levels, crop production loss in both the Monsoon Climate Region (MCR) and the Equatorial Climate Region (ECR) of Southeast Asia was assessed over 47,192 grid points with 10 × 10-kilometer resolution. We found that rainfed crops were severely affected by droughts in the MCR and floods in the ECR. About 9.42 million ha and 3.72 million ha of cropland was damaged by droughts and floods, respectively. We estimated a total loss of 20.64 million tons of crop production between 2015 and 2019. Rainfed crops in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar were strongly affected by droughts, whereas Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia were more affected by floods over the same period. Accordingly, four levels of policy interventions were prioritized by considering the geolocated crop damage levels.

Keywords: Agriculture; Climate change; Crop damage; Drought; Google Earth Engine; PDSI; Policy interventions; Southeast Asia.