Soil moisture determines the recovery time of ecosystems from drought

Abstract

Drought refers to the climate extreme caused by moisture deficiency that affects the hydrological cycle, increases the risk of forest death, causes land degradation and even reduces the biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems (Sturm et al., 2022;Vicente-Serrano et al., 2020;Zhang et al., 2022). Previous research pointed that negatively affected by warm drought, negative gross primary productivity (GPP) extremes of northern mid-latitude ecosystems increased by 10.6% in 2000-2016 compared with the period from 1982 to 1998 (Gampe et al., 2021), which greatly weakened the carbon sink of ecosystems and increased the risks to ecosystems. Suffered from droughts, resilience of ecosystem to disturbance plays roles in recovering from negative vegetation anomalies caused by droughts (Forzieri et al., 2022;Smith et al., 2022). Under increasing global drought risks, revealing how ecosystems recover from droughts and further clarifying the key factors affecting recovery could provide critical support to maintain the stability of

The resilience of ecosystems to drought

“…The resilience of ecosystems to drought has a high probability of being dynamic. Yao et al (2023) provide a paradigm for the resilience of ecosystems to drought from a long-term dynamic perspective. Future research should further investigate whether this resilience has changed over time and what factors are associated with these changes.…”

“…The resilience of ecosystems to drought is an important issue of global change, and the recovery time of ecosystems from drought is a hot topic under this issue (Müller & Bahn, 2022;Schwalm et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2022). In the recent study conducted by Yao et al (2023) (this issue) adds evidence to the perspective that soil moisture dominates vegetation carbon dynamics (Humphrey et al, 2021), although the debate is continuing. Meanwhile, this study also highlights the increasing risk of drought to ecosystems in the future, especially to natural ecosystems, as they are usually not likely to receive direct active human intervention when faced with drought (Haile et al, 2020).…”

“…The effect of drought on ecosystems is not only synchronous but also accumulated (Anderegg et al, 2013;. Yao et al (2023) comprehensively explored the effects of drought characteristics, such as the duration of drought and the intensity of drought, on the recovery time of ecosystems from drought. In subsequent studies, researchers should focus on combining the above characteristics of drought to achieve a quantitative picture of the impact of drought accumulation on ecosystem recovery.…”

“…The resilience of ecosystems to drought is an important issue of global change, and the recovery time of ecosystems from drought is a hot topic under this issue (Müller & Bahn, 2022; Schwalm et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2022). In the recent study conducted by Yao et al (2023), based on multi drought and vegetation indicators, the authors calculated the recovery time of ecosystems from drought globally and analyzed the main factors influencing this recovery time. This analysis of the driving forces on the recovery time of global ecosystem from drought provides novel contributions to the question of ecosystem resilience to drought via three aspects of the study.…”

“…Moving forward and building on this work, we would argue for four priorities for future work in this field: The effect of drought on ecosystems is not only synchronous but also accumulated (Anderegg et al, 2013; Zhang et al, 2023). Yao et al (2023) comprehensively explored the effects of drought characteristics, such as the duration of drought and the intensity of drought, on the recovery time of ecosystems from drought. In subsequent studies, researchers should focus on combining the above characteristics of drought to achieve a quantitative picture of the impact of drought accumulation on ecosystem recovery. At this stage, global scale‐related studies are still unable to achieve simultaneous fine delineation in time and space.…”