2024-03-28T12:55:10Zhttp://digital.csic.es/dspace-oai/requestoai:digital.csic.es:10261/641132021-12-27T16:44:15Zcom_10261_75com_10261_6com_10261_65com_10261_8col_10261_328col_10261_318
Response of vegetation to drought time-scales across global land biomes
Vicente Serrano, Sergio M.
Gouveia, Célia
Camarero, Jesús Julio
Beguería, Santiago
Trigo, Ricardo M.
López-Moreno, Juan I.
Azorín-Molina, César
Pasho, Edmond
Lorenzo-Lacruz, Jorge
Revuelto, Jesús
Morán-Tejeda, Enrique
Sánchez-Lorenzo, Arturo
drought impacts
NDV
drought adaptation
Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index
drought index
14 Pags., 4 Figs.
We evaluated the response of the Earth land biomes to drought by correlating a drought index with three global indicators of vegetation activity and growth: vegetation indices from satellite imagery, tree-ring growth series, and Aboveground Net Primary Production (ANPP) records. Arid and humid biomes are both affected by drought, and we suggest that the persistence of the water deficit (i.e., the drought time-scale) could be playing a key role in determining the sensitivity of land biomes to drought. We found that arid biomes respond to drought at short time-scales; that is, there is a rapid vegetation reaction as soon as water deficits below normal conditions occur. This may be due to the fact that plant species of arid regions have mechanisms allowing them to rapidly adapt to changing water availability. Humid biomes also respond to drought at short time-scales, but in this case the physiological mechanisms likely differ from those operating in arid biomes, as plants usually have a poor adaptability to water shortage. On the contrary, semiarid and subhumid biomes respond to drought at long time-scales, probably because plants are able to withstand water deficits, but they lack the rapid response of arid biomes to drought. These results are consistent among three vegetation parameters analyzed and across different land biomes, showing that the response of vegetation to drought depends on characteristic drought time-scales for each biome. Understanding the dominant time-scales at which drought most influences vegetation might help assessing the resistance and resilience of vegetation and improving our knowledge of vegetation vulnerability to climate change.
This work was supported by projects financed by the Spanish Commission of Science and Technology (CGL2011-27574-CO2-02, CGL2011-27536 and CGL2011-26654) and the Aragón Government. C.G. and R.T. were supported by Project MEDIATIC (PTDC/AAC-CLI/103361/2008) funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). J.J.C. thanks the support of ARAID and A.S-L. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Generalitat de Catalunya (2009 BP-A 00035).
Peer reviewed
2013-01-15T10:22:36Z
2013-01-15T10:22:36Z
2013-01
artículo
http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501
Vicente-Serrano SM, Gouveia C, Camarero JJ, Beguería S, Trigo R, López-Moreno JI, Azorín-Molina C, Pasho E, Lorenzo-Lacruz J, Revuelto J, Morán-Tejeda E, Sánchez-Lorenzo A. Response of vegetation to drought time-scales across global land biomes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110 (1): 52-57 (2013)
0027-8424
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/64113
10.1073/pnas.1207068110
23248309
en
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1207068110
open