The Resilience of Vegetation to the 2009/2010 Extreme Drought in Southwest China

Hui Shao; Yuandong Zhang; Zhen Yu; Fengxue Gu; Zhongtong Peng

doi:10.3390/f13060851

Forests (May 2022)

The Resilience of Vegetation to the 2009/2010 Extreme Drought in Southwest China

Hui Shao,
Yuandong Zhang,
Zhen Yu,
Fengxue Gu,
Zhongtong Peng

Affiliations

Hui Shao: Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Ecology and Nature Conservation Institute, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China
Yuandong Zhang: Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Ecology and Nature Conservation Institute, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China
Zhen Yu: Institute of Ecology, School of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Fengxue Gu: Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
Zhongtong Peng: Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Environment of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Ecology and Nature Conservation Institute, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing 100091, China

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/f13060851
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 13, no. 6
p. 851

Abstract

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The 2009/2010 extreme drought in southwest China (SWC) was a “once-in-a-century” drought event, which caused unprecedented damage to the regional ecology and socioeconomic development. The event provided a chance to explore the resilience of vegetation growth and productivity to the extreme drought. Here, we used the self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index (scPDSI) to describe the characteristics of the extreme drought. Vegetation growth and productivity indices, including the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), leaf area index (LAI), and gross primary productivity (GPP), were applied to analyze the resilience of different vegetation types to the extreme drought. Our results showed that the extreme drought event occurred mainly in Yunnan Province, Guizhou Province, central and northern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and northwestern Sichuan Province. The spatial heterogeneity of the extreme drought was related to the temperature increase and water deficit. During the extreme drought, the vegetation growth and productivity of evergreen broadleaf forest were the least suppressed, whereas cropland was greatly suppressed. The recovery of cropland was higher than that of evergreen broadleaf forest. NDVI and LAI were recovered in more than 80% of the drought-affected area within 5 months, whereas GPP required a longer time to recover. Moreover, the results of multiple linear regression showed that an increase in surface soil moisture was able to significantly improve the resistance of vegetation NDVI and LAI in evergreen broadleaf forest, evergreen needleleaf forest, evergreen broadleaf shrubland, deciduous broadleaf shrubland, and grassland. Our study highlights the differences in the resilience of different vegetation types to extreme drought and indicates that surface soil moisture is an important factor affecting vegetation resistance in SWC.

Published in Forests

ISSN: 1999-4907 (Online)
Publisher: MDPI AG
Country of publisher: Switzerland
LCC subjects: Science: Botany: Plant ecology
Website: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/

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