Global S&T Development Trend Analysis Platform of Resources and Environment
DOI | 10.1111/gcb.14747 |
How ecologists define drought, and why we should do better | |
Slette, Ingrid J.1,2; Post, Alison K.1,2; Awad, Mai2,3; Even, Trevor2,4; Punzalan, Arianna2,3,4; Williams, Sere1; Smith, Melinda D.1,2; Knapp, Alan K.1,2 | |
2019-07-19 | |
发表期刊 | GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
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ISSN | 1354-1013 |
EISSN | 1365-2486 |
出版年 | 2019 |
卷号 | 25期号:10页码:3193-3200 |
文章类型 | Article |
语种 | 英语 |
国家 | USA |
英文摘要 | Drought, widely studied as an important driver of ecosystem dynamics, is predicted to increase in frequency and severity globally. To study drought, ecologists must define or at least operationalize what constitutes a drought. How this is accomplished in practice is unclear, particularly given that climatologists have long struggled to agree on definitions of drought, beyond general variants of "an abnormal deficiency of water." We conducted a literature review of ecological drought studies (564 papers) to assess how ecologists describe and study drought. We found that ecologists characterize drought in a wide variety of ways (reduced precipitation, low soil moisture, reduced streamflow, etc.), but relatively few publications (similar to 32%) explicitly define what are, and are not, drought conditions. More troubling, a surprising number of papers (similar to 30%) simply equated "dry conditions" with "drought" and provided little characterization of the drought conditions studied. For a subset of these, we calculated Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index values for the reported drought periods. We found that while almost 90% of the studies were conducted under conditions quantifiable as slightly to extremely drier than average, similar to 50% were within the range of normal climatic variability. We conclude that the current state of the ecological drought literature hinders synthesis and our ability to draw broad ecological inferences because drought is often declared but is not explicitly defined or well characterized. We suggest that future drought publications provide at least one of the following: (a) the climatic context of the drought period based on long-term records; (b) standardized climatic index values; (c) published metrics from drought-monitoring organizations; (d) a quantitative definition of what the authors consider to be drought conditions for their system. With more detailed and consistent quantification of drought conditions, comparisons among studies can be more rigorous, increasing our understanding of the ecological effects of drought. |
英文关键词 | climate drought literature review precipitation SPEI |
领域 | 气候变化 ; 资源环境 |
收录类别 | SCI-E |
WOS记录号 | WOS:000478223200001 |
WOS关键词 | PRECIPITATION EVAPOTRANSPIRATION INDEX ; TIME-SCALES ; DISTRIBUTED EXPERIMENTS ; GLOBAL PATTERNS ; VEGETATION ; EXTREMES ; CHINA ; DEFINITION ; FRAMEWORK ; IMPACTS |
WOS类目 | Biodiversity Conservation ; Ecology ; Environmental Sciences |
WOS研究方向 | Biodiversity & Conservation ; Environmental Sciences & Ecology |
引用统计 | |
文献类型 | 期刊论文 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/185177 |
专题 | 气候变化 资源环境科学 |
作者单位 | 1.Colorado State Univ, Dept Biol, Ft Collins, CO 80523 USA; 2.Colorado State Univ, Grad Degree Program Ecol, Ft Collins, CO 80523 USA; 3.Colorado State Univ, Dept Ecosyst Sci & Sustainabil, Ft Collins, CO 80523 USA; 4.Colorado State Univ, Nat Resources Ecol Lab, Ft Collins, CO 80523 USA |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Slette, Ingrid J.,Post, Alison K.,Awad, Mai,et al. How ecologists define drought, and why we should do better[J]. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY,2019,25(10):3193-3200. |
APA | Slette, Ingrid J..,Post, Alison K..,Awad, Mai.,Even, Trevor.,Punzalan, Arianna.,...&Knapp, Alan K..(2019).How ecologists define drought, and why we should do better.GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY,25(10),3193-3200. |
MLA | Slette, Ingrid J.,et al."How ecologists define drought, and why we should do better".GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 25.10(2019):3193-3200. |
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