Abstract
Drought can weaken forest activity and even lead to forest mortality, and the response of different forest types to drought can be diverse. Deciduous broadleaf forest (DBF) and deciduous needleleaf forest (DNF) are two of the majority forest types in northern China. In this region, a severe drought event happened in 2002. However, due to the lack of data, the spatio-temporal characteristics of the ecosystem stability of different forest types here remain unclear. In this study, we used a machine learning approach (model tree ensemble, MTE) to drive fluxsite gross primary productivity (GPP), combined with remote sensing-based GPP and a vegetation index data (EVI), to analyze the spatial and temporal characteristics of resistance and resilience of DNF and DBF in northern China during and after the 2002 drought. The results showed that the DBFs were more acclimatized to the drought, while the resistance and resilience of DNF and DBF were diverse under different consecutive drought events. These results could be suggestive for forest conservation and vegetation modeling.
Highlights
As the largest terrestrial carbon sink, forests absorb nearly half of the carbon dioxide of the whole terrestrial ecosystem absorption [1]
There were four of these extensive drought events occurred after year
We decided to focus on exploring the resistance and one-to-four-year resilience of forests to drought in 2002
Summary
As the largest terrestrial carbon sink, forests absorb nearly half of the carbon dioxide of the whole terrestrial ecosystem absorption [1]. Previous studies have shown that drought can affect the ecological stability of forest ecosystems by reducing forest productivity, or even lead to forest mortality [2,3,4,5]. Spatial heterogeneity exists in the response of forests to drought. The response of different vegetation types to drought may differ [6,7,8,9]. Physiological activities of vegetation, such as photosynthesis and carbon allocation, might respond to drought differently as well [10,11]. Studies in some regions, including northern China, are still lacking
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