The 2020 floods in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Anhui provinces in the middle and lower stretches of the Yangtze River affected 731,000 hectares of cropland. Anhui is the province that lost the largest area of cropland (275,000 ha) to the floods.

In order to monitor the impact of continuous heavy rainfall on agricultural production, CropWatch used the multi-source satellite remote sensing data of ESA Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 from May 1 to August 10, 2020 to map the flood. The monitoring focused on Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The monitoring results show that the areas affected by flooding reached the largest extent between mid- and late July. The cropland area affected by the flood disaster in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces was estimated at 731,000 ha, accounting for about 3.0% of the cropland area in the four provinces. The following are the detailed results from the monitoring:

From mid-July to August 10, 2020, the surface water area in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Anhui provinces expanded by about 1.444 million ha in total. The flooded areas, including cropland and non-cropland were as follows: Hubei 376,000 ha, Hunan 350,000 ha, Jiangxi 357,000 ha and Anhui 360,000 ha (Table 4.4).

Since the start of the flood disaster in early July, a total of about 731,000 hectares of cropland have been inundated in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces. Among them, Anhui Province has the largest affected cropland area of about 275,000 ha, followed by Hubei (217,000 ha), Jiangxi (138,000 ha) and Hunan (101,000 ha). The flooded areas, as percentage of cropland, account for 4% of Jianxi, 3.7% of Anhui, 3% of Hubei and 1.7% of Hunan.

The flooded croplands are mainly located in the surrounding areas of Dongting Lake, Poyang Lake and Huaihe River, as shown in Figure 1. About 54.2% of the farmland inundated by the flood was planted with rice, with a total area of about 397,000 ha.

Figure 4.18. Flood and affected cropland areas from July 10 to August 10, 2020

Table 4.4. Flood area and affected cropland area in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces in 2020 (July 10 to August 10, 2020)