The impact of the 2009/2010 drought on vegetation growth and terrestrial carbon balance in Southwest China

Responses of Seasonal Indicators to Extreme Droughts in Southwest China

“…In this paper, the study area includes part of Yunnan Province, Guizhou Province and Chongqing Municipality, as well as northwestern Guangxi Province and southeastern Sichuan Province (inside the red polygon in Figure 1). Several studies have already identified the spatial distribution of the three droughts based on drought indices [12,28,29,[45][46][47]. Different from early studies, this study selected the major region affected by all three droughts (in summer 2006, 2009/2010 and 2011/2012) as our study area.…”

“…Frequent droughts have caused serious damage to water resources [4], ecosystems [5], agriculture [6,7] and the whole society [8] in SWC and beyond. Especially, droughts can greatly dry up rivers and ponds, reduce drinking water and affect vegetation, with the consequence of reducing vegetation productivity, increasing tree mortality and causing a massive agricultural reduction and even famine [4,[9][10][11][12]. The above three droughts cumulatively impacted the drinking water for more than 46 million people and the total economic losses exceeded 40 billion RMB [13][14][15].…”

“…When it comes to recovery of drought, studies in the United States found that drought recovery duration indicates a positive correlation with drought severity and duration, but a negative relationship with gross primary productivity (GPP) [37,38]. Moreover, vegetation greenness is more susceptible to drought than productivity, and more than 65% of vegetation can be restored within three months in SWC [12]. In terms of the response of surface water to drought, ecosystem water-use efficiency (WUE) was found different trends in response to severe drought episodes with a pattern of a decrease in the Northern Hemisphere and an increase in the Southern Hemisphere [37].…”

Time Series of Landsat Imagery Shows Vegetation Recovery in Two Fragile Karst Watersheds in Southwest China from 1988 to 2016

“…For example, Liu et al [70] found the annual average temperature has increased in the majority meteorological ground stations in southwest China, at an average increase rate of 0.16 • C per decade. The increasingly warming and drying climate after 2001 is not conducive to vegetation growth as reported by Li et al [71]. However, vegetation cover exhibited a stronger significant increasing trend during 2001-2016 in contrast to the years prior to 2001 (Figures 6 and 7), suggesting that the improvement in vegetation cover could be largely attributed to other non-climate factors.…”

Exceptional Drought across Southeastern Australia Caused by Extreme Lack of Precipitation and Its Impacts on NDVI and SIF in 2018

“…NDVI characterizes the vegetation greenness, which can track changes in vegetation condition caused by drought to some extent [58]. In contrast, SIF reflects vegetation photosynthesis [23]. Therefore, NDVI and SIF respond differently to drought.…”