Attributing Vegetation Recovery During the Indian Summer Monsoon to Climate Drivers in Central India

Authors

  • Vikram Chandel The interdisciplinary programme in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1991-5596
  • Tejasvi Chauhan Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i1.927

Keywords:

vegetation water stress, vegetation dynamics, vegetation drought recovery, mutual information, information theory

Abstract

Increasing droughts and heat waves as a result of global warming pose a major threat to forests and croplands in India. Monitoring the dynamics of vegetation during a drought and its recovery is essential for the Indian socio-economy and biodiversity. We investigate vegetation recovery from a stressed state in the pre-monsoon (May) period to the end of the monsoon period (September). We then attribute net change during the monsoon period to climate drivers such as temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture. To delineate non-linear interactions, we use an information-theoretic metric to understand the relative association of climate variables with vegetation productivity on a daily scale. We found that pre-monsoon vegetation stress is influenced by soil moisture (r = 0.8, p < 0.01), which is driven by variations in temperature and precipitation. During the monsoons, precipitation contributes to vegetation recovery from pre-monsoon stress through soil moisture recharge while inhibiting vegetation productivity by limiting the amount of radiation available for photosynthesis. Linear regression shows the significant negative dependence of vegetation recovery on precipitation (β = –0.7, p < 0.01) and positive dependence on soil moisture (β = 0.4, p < 0.1) indicating radiation limitation on photosynthesis...

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

References

Anderegg, William R L, Jeffrey M Kane, and Leander D L Anderegg. 2013. “Consequences of Widespread Tree Mortality Triggered by Drought and Temperature Stress.” Nature Climate Change, 3: 30–36. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1635

Anderson-Teixeira, Kristina J, Adam D Miller, Jacqueline E Mohan, Tara W Hudiburg, Benjamin D Duval, and Evan H DeLucia. 2013. “Altered Dynamics of Forest Recovery under a Changing Climate.” Global Change Biology, 19(7): 2001–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12194

Bonan, Gordon. 2015. Ecological Climatology. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781107339200

Ciais, Ph, M Reichstein, N Viovy, A Granier, J Ogée, V Allard, M Aubinet, et al. 2005. “Europe-Wide Reduction in Primary Productivity Caused by the Heat and Drought in 2003.” Nature, 437: 529–533. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03972.

Clark, James S, Louis Iverson, Christopher W Woodall, Craig D Allen, David M Bell, Don C Bragg, Anthony W D’Amato, et al. 2016. “The Impacts of Increasing Drought on Forest Dynamics, Structure, and Biodiversity in the United States.” Global Change Biology, 22(7): 2329–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13160

Fraccascia, Luca, Ilaria Giannoccaro, and Vito Albino. 2018. “Resilience of Complex Systems: State of the Art and Directions for Future Research.” Complexity. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/3421529

Gupta, Vivek, and Manoj Kumar Jain. 2018. “Investigation of Multi-Model Spatiotemporal Mesoscale Drought Projections over India under Climate Change Scenario.” Journal of Hydrology, 567: 489–509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.10.012

Jiao, Tong, Christopher A Williams, John Rogan, Martin G De Kauwe, and Belinda E Medlyn. 2020. “Drought Impacts on Australian Vegetation During the Millennium Drought Measured With Multisource Spaceborne Remote Sensing.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 125(2). https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JG005145

Joiner, Joanna, and Yasuko Yoshida. 2020. “Satellite-Based Reflectances Capture Large Fraction of Variability in Global Gross Primary Production (GPP) at Weekly Time Scales.” Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2020.108092

Knuth, Kevin H, Anthony Gotera, Charles T Curry, Karen A Huyser, Kevin R Wheeler, and William B Rossow. 2013. “Revealing Relationships among Relevant Climate Variables with Information Theory,” November. https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1311.4632

Li, Xiangyi, Yue Li, Anping Chen, Mengdi Gao, Ingrid J. Slette, and Shilong Piao. 2019. “The Impact of the 2009/2010 Drought on Vegetation Growth and Terrestrial Carbon Balance in Southwest China.” Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2019.01.036

Luo, Hui, Tao Zhou, Peixin Yu, Chuixiang Yi, Xia Liu, Yajie Zhang, Peifang Zhou, Jingzhou Zhang, and Yixin Xu. 2022. “The Forest Recovery Path after Drought Dependence on Forest Type and Stock Volume.” Environmental Research Letters, 17(5). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac57e5

Ma, Xuanlong, Alfredo Huete, James Cleverly, Derek Eamus, Frédéric Chevallier, Joanna Joiner, Benjamin Poulter, et al. 2016. “Drought Rapidly Diminishes the Large Net CO2 Uptake in 2011 over Semi-Arid Australia.” Scientific Reports, 6. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep37747

Ma, Xuanlong, Alfredo Huete, Susan Moran, Guillermo Ponce-Campos, and Derek Eamus. 2015. “Abrupt Shifts in Phenology and Vegetation Productivity under Climate Extremes.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 120(10): 2036–52. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JG003144

Martens, Brecht, Diego G. Miralles, Hans Lievens, Robin Van Der Schalie, Richard A.M. De Jeu, Diego Fernández-Prieto, Hylke E. Beck, Wouter A. Dorigo, and Niko E.C. Verhoest. 2017. “GLEAM v3: Satellite-Based Land Evaporation and Root-Zone Soil Moisture.” Geoscientific Model Development, 10(5): 1903–25. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-1903-2017

Martin, Philippe H, Gert Jan Nabuurs, Marc Aubinet, Timo Karjalainen, Edward L Vine, John Kinsman, and Linda S Heath. 2001. “Carbon Sinks in Temperate Forests.” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 26: 435–65. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.energy.26.1.435

Mazdiyasni, Omid, Amir AghaKouchak, Steven J Davis, Shahrbanou Madadgar, Ali Mehran, Elisa Ragno, Mojtaba Sadegh, et al. 2017. “Increasing Probability of Mortality during Indian Heat Waves.” Science Advances, 3(6). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700066

Mishra, Vimal, Reepal Shah, and Bridget Thrasher. 2014. “Soil Moisture Droughts under the Retrospective and Projected Climate in India.” Journal of Hydrometeorology, 15(6): 2267–92. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-13-0177.1

Nimmo, D G, R Mac Nally, S C Cunningham, A Haslem, and A F Bennett. 2015. “Vive La Résistance: Reviving Resistance for 21st Century Conservation.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 30(9): 516–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2015.07.008

Pai, D S, Latha Sridhar, M Rajeevan, O P Sreejith, N S Satbhai, and B Mukhopadhyay. 2014. “Development of a New High Spatial Resolution (0.25° × 0.25°) Long Period (1901-2010) Daily Gridded Rainfall Data Set over India and Its Comparison with Existing Data Sets over the Region.” Mausam, 65(1): https://mausamjournal.imd.gov.in/index.php/MAUSAM/article/view/851.

Panda, Dileep Kumar, Amir AghaKouchak, and Sunil Kumar Ambast. 2017. “Increasing Heat Waves and Warm Spells in India, Observed from a Multiaspect Framework.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 12(7): 3837–58. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JD026292.

Rohini, P, M Rajeevan, and A K Srivastava. 2016. “On the Variability and Increasing Trends of Heat Waves over India.” Scientific Reports, 6. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep26153

Scheffer, Marten, Jordi Bascompte, William A Brock, Victor Brovkin, Stephen R Carpenter, Vasilis Dakos, Hermann Held, Egbert H Van Nes, Max Rietkerk, and George Sugihara. 2009. “Early-Warning Signals for Critical Transitions.” Nature, 461: 53–59. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08227

Schuldt, Bernhard, Allan Buras, Matthias Arend, Yann Vitasse, Carl Beierkuhnlein, Alexander Damm, Mana Gharun, et al. 2020. “A First Assessment of the Impact of the Extreme 2018 Summer Drought on Central European Forests.” Basic and Applied Ecology, 45: 86–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2020.04.003

Senf, Cornelius, Allan Buras, Christian S Zang, Anja Rammig, and Rupert Seidl. 2020. “Excess Forest Mortality Is Consistently Linked to Drought across Europe.” Nature Communications, 11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19924-1

Soepadmo, E. 1993. “Tropical Rain Forests as Carbon Sinks.” Chemosphere, 110(1): 52–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/0045-6535(93)90066-E

Vicente-Serrano, Sergio M, Célia Gouveia, Jesús Julio Camarero, Santiago Beguería, Ricardo Trigo, Juan I. López-Moreno, César Azorín-Molina, et al. 2013. “Response of Vegetation to Drought Time-Scales across Global Land Biomes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1207068110

Wendling, Valentin, Christophe Peugeot, Angeles G Mayor, Pierre Hiernaux, Eric Mougin, Manuela Grippa, Laurent Kergoat, Romain Walcker, Sylvie Galle, and Thierry Lebel. 2019. “Drought-Induced Regime Shift and Resilience of a Sahelian Ecohydrosystem.” Environmental Research Letters, 14(10). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab3dde

Whitehead, David. 2011. “Forests as Carbon Sinks – Benefits and Consequences.” Tree Physiology, 31(9): 893–902. https://doi.org/10.1093/treephys/tpr063

Zhang, Xiang, Renee Obringer, Chehan Wei, Nengcheng Chen, and Dev Niyogi. 2017. “Droughts in India from 1981 to 2013 and Implications to Wheat Production.” Scientific Reports, 7. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep44552

Additional Files

Published

2023-01-31

How to Cite

Chandel, V., & Chauhan, T. (2023). Attributing Vegetation Recovery During the Indian Summer Monsoon to Climate Drivers in Central India. Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal, 6(1), 109–122. https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i1.927

Issue

Section

Special Section: Rehabilitating Degraded Ecosystems