Abstract
The content of soil water affects the physiological activities of vegetation, and the type of vegetation also affects the soil water balance. It is of great significance to study the response of vegetation to soil moisture change, which is helpful for understanding the vulnerability of vegetation for regional and environmental protections. The response of vegetation to soil moisture in Guangdong Province from mid-October 2015 to the end of March 2017 was studied by using cloudy region drought index (CRDI) as the drought index and volumetric soil water content (VSWC) as the soil moisture index to measure the level of water stress on vegetation. Taking the peak and valley positions of CRDI and VSWC as characteristic points, the lag time of vegetation to volumetric soil water content was obtained by judging the difference between the peak and valley positions of the two indexes. The results indicate that the response of vegetation to volumetric soil water content in Guangdong lagged 3.33 periods (9–35 days) on average. When VSWC is sufficient, there is no obvious difference in time-lag between different types of vegetation. However, when VSWC is relatively insufficient, grass shows the fastest response to the change of volumetric soil water content. Both longitude and soil moisture affect the lag time of vegetation. Under the same conditions, the higher the soil humidity is, the longer the lag time is, and the longer the delay time is with the greater longitude. CRDI can reflect the time-lag effect between vegetation and VSWC in Guangdong, indicating it is a sensitive and applicable index for characterizing the time-lag phenomena of vegetation to soil moisture.
Highlights
Climate conditions significantly affect vegetation growth in terrestrial ecosystems [1,2].In general, vegetation growth primarily depends on climatic factors: temperature, precipitation, and radiation [3,4], and climate could explain approximately 54% of the variation in vegetation [5]
The downscale soil moisture data made by Meng [31] in 2016 are averaged to obtain downscale soilofmoisture data The made by Meng
Studying the time-lag effect of vegetation response on volumetric soil water content (VSWC) is helpful for understanding the impact of climate change on vegetation in a specific area
Summary
Climate conditions significantly affect vegetation growth in terrestrial ecosystems [1,2]. Vegetation growth primarily depends on climatic factors: temperature, precipitation, and radiation [3,4], and climate could explain approximately 54% of the variation in vegetation [5]. Climate change sometimes does not show an immediate impact on vegetation, and the response of vegetation to climate change usually lags. In 1989, Davis first proposed the lag effect of vegetation on climate change (greenhouse warming) [6]. Scholars have done a lot of related studies [7–10]. Wu et al found that regarding the time-lag effects, the climatic factors explained 64% variation of the global vegetation growth, which was 11% relatively higher than the model-ignoring time-lag effects [1]
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