Abstract: Impacts of drought play a vital role in studies on human-environment relationship in arid and semiarid regions. The assessment on the impacts of drought on social-ecological system in rural areas provides a new thinking for human-environment system sustainability of ecological fragile-poverty zone in Northwest China. The article analyses the impacts of drought on grain yield, economic development and rural household family. Then, it concludes impact mechanism of meteorological drought on social-ecological system in rural areas, applying Standardized Precipitation Index, economic loss of drought model and analysis tool of GIS. The main results include: (1) There is significant positive correlation between drought intensity and grain yield especially in the southern and northern parts of Yuzhong county, where drought intensity is high in 1960-2015. (2) Serious economy loss caused by drought characterized with high frequency and wide distribution occurs in the southern and northern parts of Yuzhong county. (3) Drought causes reduction of agricultural product and economic income obviously, and results in serious food security of rural household families that are engaged just in agriculture activity. (4) Impact mechanism of drought on social-ecological system in rural areas depends on water resource utilization loop, production loop, income and livelihood loop and economy loop.

Key words: casual loop, standardized precipitation index, drought, social-ecological system in rural areas, economic loss of drought model