A Comparison Study on the Social Impact and Environmental Significance of Various Coupled Disasters in Eastern China

Social-economic development history of China was a long struggle process. Flood, drought and locust plague were regarded as the three biggest natural disasters in Chinese history. Flood and drought which had a close relationship with climate change have been studied by many researchers for a long time. More work should be done on locust plagues that coupled with other natural disasters and social crises so as to influence social-economic development. Accordingly, through collection and interpretation of Chinese historical documents related with locust plagues and other disasters, a Chinese historical locust plague database was set up, according to which the trend and characteristics of locust plagues were disclosed and several locust plague sequences were constructed. More work was done to deal with comparisons between locust plague sequences and sequences of other natural disasters, social crises, and climate proxies-mainly temperature and precipitation. The representative comparisons were done between locust plague sequence and war & disturbance sequence, epidemic sequence, dust storm sequence, rice price index sequence, and flood sequence of the Huaihe River, mainly on annual scale or decade scale. At last, preliminary conclusions of the social influence and environmental significance of historical various disasters were drawn. In any case, this study was expected to offer some historical experience to environmental protection and public security in modern society.