How ecologists define drought, and why we should do better
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
| Veröffentlicht in: | Global change biology. - 1999. - 25(2019), 10 vom: 20. Okt., Seite 3193-3200 |
|---|---|
| 1. Verfasser: | |
| Weitere Verfasser: | , , , , , , |
| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2019
|
| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | Global change biology |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. Review SPEI climate drought literature review precipitation Soil mehr... |
| Zusammenfassung: | © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 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 (~32%) explicitly define what are, and are not, drought conditions. More troubling, a surprising number of papers (~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, ~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 |
|---|---|
| Beschreibung: | Date Completed 25.10.2019 Date Revised 31.05.2022 published: Print-Electronic CommentIn: Glob Chang Biol. 2020 Feb;26(2):322-324. - PMID 31442346 Citation Status MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1365-2486 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/gcb.14747 |