ArticleNational science review2023
Global variations in critical drought thresholds that impact vegetation.
Article in National science review, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 152 citations in OpenAlex.
- Drying crisis under greening: a study on the drought trigger thresholds of vegetation carbon fixation loss in karst areas.Carbon balance and management · 2026Article
- Widespread controls of precipitation sensitivity on drought recovery of global forests.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Biogeography of Stress: Graded and Threshold Phenological Responses in European Beech-Dominated Forests Under Disruptive Heatwaves.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Responses of China's dry grassland low-growth to temperature- and water-related extremes.iScience · 2026Article
- The characteristics and spatiotemporal evolution of heatwaves and droughts across six typical regions in China.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Fast response of satellite fluorescence-derived plant physiology to drought stress.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Variational Characteristics of Vegetation Recovery Period Under Extreme Drought Across Various Land Cover Types in Guizhou Province, China.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Drought tolerance classification using unmanned aerial systems based on RGB and multispectral data.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Future climate change impacts on carbon dynamics and ecohydrological risks in the West Liao river Basin, China: implications for carbon management.Carbon balance and management · 2025Article
- Flash droughts threaten global managed forests.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Genome-Wide Identification and Characterization of the Xyloglucan Endotransglucosylase/Hydrolase (Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Drivers of the pre-season drought thresholds triggering earlier autumn foliar senescence in the Northern Hemisphere.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Structural and Functional Characteristics of Soil Microbial Communities in Forest-Wetland Ecotones: A Case Study of the Lesser Khingan Mountains.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Response of Carbon Uptake to Soil Moisture Stress: Adaptation to Climatic Aridity.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Monitoring Terrestrial Ecosystem Resilience Using Earth Observation Data: Identifying Consensus and Limitations Across Metrics.Global change biology · 2025Review
- Warming exacerbates global inequality in forest carbon and nitrogen cycles.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Traditional Meiyu-Baiu has been suspended by global warming.National science review · 2024Article
- Global critical soil moisture thresholds of plant water stress.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Soil moisture decline in China's monsoon loess critical zone: More a result of land-use conversion than climate change.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Forestation at the right time with the right species can generate persistent carbon benefits in China.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors at 9 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Identifying the thresholds of drought that, if crossed, suppress vegetation functioning is vital for accurate quantification of how land ecosystems respond to climate variability and change. We present a globally applicable framework to identify drought thresholds for vegetation responses to different levels of known soil-moisture deficits using four remotely sensed vegetation proxies spanning 2001-2018. The thresholds identified represent critical inflection points for changing vegetation responses from highly resistant to highly vulnerable in response to drought stress, and as a warning signal for substantial vegetation impacts. Drought thresholds varied geographically, with much lower percentiles of soil-moisture anomalies in vegetated areas covered by more forests, corresponding to a comparably stronger capacity to mitigate soil water deficit stress in forested ecosystems. Generally, those lower thresholds are detected in more humid climates. State-of-the-art land models, however, overestimated thresholds of soil moisture (i.e. overestimating drought impacts), especially in more humid areas with higher forest covers and arid areas with few forest covers. Based on climate model projections, we predict that the risk of vegetation damage will increase by the end of the twenty-first century in some hotspots like East Asia, Europe, Amazon, southern Australia and eastern and southern Africa. Our data-based results will inform projections on future drought impacts on terrestrial ecosystems and provide an effective tool for drought management.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.