09:30 〜 09:45
[HGG02-03] Measuring the Effectiveness of Agricultural Development in Mitigating the Impacts of Floods and Droughts on Human Societies in History
キーワード：Floods, Droughts, Agricultural development, Population and environment, China
Agricultural development is a crucial component of social resilience in reducing the social impacts of climatic extremes. Although historical archives contain tons of information on agricultural development measures, they have rarely been considered in quantitative environment-population research due to the qualitative nature of such information. This study seeks to overcome this obstacle by quantifying the historical information on landmark agricultural development measures in China in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) – the adoption of American food plants, setting up of granary systems, and implementation of disaster relief measures – and constructing the related digital geo-referenced databases in 1-year resolution, covering 267 prefectures (fu) in China Proper. Those newly constructed databases, along with the historical data of floods, droughts, famines, epidemics, wars, and the population that I collected in the past, are analysed with spatial econometrics and multi-scalar analysis to assess how far those landmark agricultural development measures can assist in weakening the connection between climatic extremes (floods and droughts) and social catastrophes (famines, epidemics, and wars) in different spatio-temporal and regional settings. This study is the pioneering step toward a more quantitative use of the information on social resilience to climatic extremes available from historical texts.