Droughts negatively impact forests by reducing growth and increasing defoliation leading to forest dieback as the climate becomes warmer and drier. However, the timing and severity of droughts determine how differently or intensively water shortage affects primary (shoot and leaf formation) and secondary growth (stem radial growth based on tree-ring widths). We compare the impact of two severe ...

Abstract. Drought can be described as a temporary decrease in water availability over significant period that affects both surface and groundwater resources. Droughts propagate through the hydrological cycle may impact vulnerable ecosystems. This paper investigates drought propagation cycle, focusing on assessing its groundwater-fed wetland ecosystem. Meteorological indices were used to analyze...

Every year, South Asian countries suffer from declining agricultural outputs due to climate extremes such as floods and droughts. Recurrent droughts have depressed rural economies enhanced widespread hunger human migration cities (Miyan, 2015). Due climatic changes, the region is projected experience rising temperatures more frequent extreme weather events in long term (Trenberth et al., 2014)....

[1] During the Medieval Climate Anomaly, North America experienced severe droughts and widespread mobilization of dune fields that persisted for decades. We use an atmosphere general circulation model, forced by a tropical Pacific sea surface temperature reconstruction and changes in the land surface consistent with estimates of dune mobilization (conceptualized as partial devegetation), to inv...

Future anthropogenic-induced changes to the earth’s climate will likely include increases in temperature and changes in precipitation that will increase the frequency and severity of droughts. Insects and fungal diseases are important disturbances in forests, yet understanding of the role of drought in outbreaks of these agents is limited. Current knowledge concerning the effects of drought on ...

water crisis and drought are among the most important issues to which the human has been faced particularly in the recent years; hence, investigation of drought is so important in optimal water management. drought has been known as an environmental phenomenon which is inseparable from climate changes which can occur in any geographical region. various definitions have been presented since yet. ...

In seasonally dry tropical forest regions, drought avoidance during the dry season coupled with high assimilation rates in the wet season is hypothesized to be an advantageous strategy for forest trees in regions with severe and long dry seasons. In contrast, where dry seasons are milder, drought tolerance coupled with a conservative resource-use strategy is expected to maximize carbon assimila...

Understanding how tropical trees will respond to extreme temperatures and drought is essential to predict how future increases in the severity, frequency and duration of extreme climatic events will affect tropical systems. In this study, we investigated leaf thermotolerance by quantifying the temperatures that resulted in a 50 % decrease in photosystem II function (T50) in experimentally grown...

A new index for agricultural drought monitoring is presented based on the integration of different soil/vegetation remote sensing observations. The synergistic fusion of the surface soil moisture (SSM) from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) derived land surface temperature (LST), and water/vegetation indices for a...