Study Reveals Soil Moisture as Principal Water Stress for Vegetation in Central Asia

A research team led by Prof. Guli Jiapaer from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has pinpointed soil moisture as the principal water stress factor for vegetation across Central Asia. Their work was published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on March 25.

The researcher used the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Soil Moisture Index (SSMI), and Standardized Vapor Pressure Deficit Index (SVDI) as water stress indices for precipitation, soil moisture, and atmospheric moisture, respectively. By combining these three indices with data on vegetation structure, greenness, and photosynthesis, they quantified the sensitivity of vegetation to each type of water stresses.

They found that vegetation across all land-cover types in Central Asia is most sensitive to soil moisture. Trend analysis further reveals that from 1982 to 2020, vegetation across Central Asia exhibited a significant increasing trend in sensitivity to soil moisture.

Furthermore, projections based on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) indicate that vegetation will remain most sensitive to soil moisture stress in the future.

In cultivated lands, their findings indicate that irrigation remarkably reduced crops’ sensitivity to soil moisture, and the mitigating effect intensified as irrigation intensity increased.

This study enhances our understanding of the sensitivity of Central Asian vegetation to various water stresses and provides a theoretical basis for developing measures to mitigate the adverse consequences of water stresses.

Read the full article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111140

Contact

LONG Huaping

Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography

E-mail: longhp@ms.xjb.ac.cn

Web: http://english.egi.cas.cn