Revisiting the cumulative effects of drought on global gross primary productivity based on new long-term series data (1982-2018)

Aim: Drought has broad and deep impacts on vegetation. Studies on the effects of drought on vegetation have been conducted over years. However, global-scale and long-term (>30 years) studies on the cumulative effect of drought are still lacking. Thus, combining a new satellite based gross primary productivity (GPP) and multi-timescale Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index datasets, we investigated the cumulative effect of drought on global vegetation GPP.

Location: Global.

Time period: 1982 – 2018 (37 years).

Major taxa studied: Forests and grasslands.

Method: Based on correlation analysis framework, we investigated the cumulative effect duration of drought on global vegetation GPP. Meanwhile, the variability of this cumulative effect across different elevation gradients and climatic zones was analyzed using variance analysis.