Abstract
Droughts can affect the physiological activity of trees, damage tissues, and even trigger mortality, yet the response of different forest types to drought at the decadal time scale remains uncertain. In this study, we used two remote sensing-based vegetation products, the MODIS enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and MODIS gross primary productivity (GPP), to explore the temporal stability of deciduous needleleaf forests (DNFs) and deciduous broadleaf forests (DBFs) in droughts and their legacy effects in North China from 2001 to 2018. The results of both products showed that the temporal stability of DBFs was consistently much higher than that of DNFs, even though the DBFs experienced extreme droughts and the DNFs did not. The DBFs also exhibited similar patterns in their legacy effects from droughts, with these effects extending up to 4 years after the droughts. These results indicate that DBFs have been better acclimated to drought events in North China. Furthermore, the results suggest that the GPP was more sensitive to water variability than EVI. These findings will be helpful for forest modeling, management, and conservation.
Highlights
Forests are important ecosystems globally, providing nearly half of the total gross primary production for terrestrial ecosystems [1]
We found that the standard deviation, which stands for the variation of interannual change, explained more of the Temporal Stability (TS) values
We found no significant difference between the temporal stability of deciduous broadleaf forests (DBFs) the SPEI, TMP, and were disentangled, the results suggested (Figure 4); the range and distribution were similar
Summary
Forests are important ecosystems globally, providing nearly half of the total gross primary production for terrestrial ecosystems [1]. Due to spatial heterogeneity, differences in the spatial and temporal characteristics of droughts at the regional scale [8] may cause variable responses from forests to these extreme events. The response of forest ecosystems to droughts can be characterized by many aspects, such as temporal stability, resistance, and resilience. These aspects are all part of the overall ecosystem stability [9]. Research has shown that the ecosystem stability against droughts may vary among different regions [10], forest types [11], and even tree species [12]
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