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Title: Global patterns of drought recovery

Journal Article · · Nature (London)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/nature23021· OSTI ID:1390439

Drought is a recurring multi-factor phenomenon with major impacts on natural and human systems1-3. Drought is especially important for land carbon sink variability, influencing climate regulation of the terrestrial biosphere4. While 20th Century trends in drought regime are ambiguous, “more extreme extremes” as well as more frequent and severe droughts3,7 are expected in the 21st Century. Recovery time, the length of time an ecosystem requires to revert to its pre-drought functional state, is a critical metric of drought impact. Yet the spatiotemporal patterning and controls of drought recovery are largely unknown. Here we use three distinct global datasets of gross primary productivity to show that across diverse terrestrial ecosystems drought recovery times are driven by biological productivity and biodiversity, with drought length and severity of secondary importance. Recovery time, especially for extreme droughts, and the areal extent of ecosystems in recovery from drought generally increase over the 20th Century, supporting an increase globally in drought impact8. Our results indicate that if future Anthropocene droughts become more widespread as expected, that droughts will become more frequent relative to recovery time. This increases the risk of entering a new regime where vegetation never recovers to its original state and widespread degradation of the land carbon sink ensues.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1390439
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-127341
Journal Information:
Nature (London), Vol. 548, Issue 7666; ISSN 0028-0836
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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In vivo quantification of plant starch reserves at micrometer resolution using X-ray microCT imaging and machine learning journal March 2018
Climate Change Effects on Secondary Compounds of Forest Trees in the Northern Hemisphere journal October 2018
Effects of short-term variability of meteorological variables on soil temperature in permafrost regions text January 2018
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