Revealing European-wide ecosystem strategies to drought from space.

Abstract

Ecosystems are threatened by increasing droughts under climate change. A multitude of plant physiological regulation processes determine the overall drought resistance of ecosystems. So far, these physiological strategies to resist drought are poorly understood at large scales across different ecosystem types because the detection of these physiological regulation processes is mostly limited to in situ measurements on individual plants. In this study, by using high-resolution remote sensing data, we evaluated drought strategies of different ecosystem types throughout Europe by evaluating three key physiological regulation aspects (evapotranspiration, water content, and carbon regulation) based on their associated vegetation attributes. We found that different ecosystem types show divergent responses in these physiological attributes, suggesting different optimization strategies with respect to water saving versus spending, water content stabilizing versus fluctuating, and leaf conserving versus shedding strategies facing drought. These drought strategies from remote sensing provide timely ecosystem response information, facilitating earth system model predictions and aiding the protection against future droughts at large scales.