Simulation of maize drought degree in Xi'an City based on cusp catastrophe model

Drought generally has significant impacts on crops. It is essential to quantitatively evaluate the relationship between crop production and drought degree to provide technical support for drought disaster prevention. In this study, a drought degree index that can reflect the changes in precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture was developed on the basis of crop yield reduction rate. Four drought scenarios were set up to simulate the effects of meteorological drought on drought degree of crops at different growth stages. A cusp catastrophe model was constructed to analyze the mutation characteristics of the drought degree of maize at different growth stages under different meteorological drought conditions. Xi'an City in China was selected as the study area, and summer maize was selected as the research crop. Precipitation and crop yield data from 1951 to 2010 were used as the fundamental data to investigate drought degree mutation of summer maize. The results show that, under the meteorological drought conditions at the emergence-jointing stage, drought degree may change abruptly, and soil moisture content at the sowingemergence, jointing-tasseling, and tasseling-mature stages should be kept higher than 39%.