Assessment the impact of drought on vegetation carbon source/sink at a spatial scale and identify the dominant factors in the Middle Reaches of the Yellow River Basin, China

Abstract

Drought poses a severe threat to terrestrial ecosystems’ carbon sequestration function, which in turn affects regional sustainable development. Understanding its impact on carbon source/sink dynamics is crucial for addressing extreme climate change challenges. This study, based on the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford approach (CASA) model and soil heterotrophic respiration equation, the Net Ecosystem Productivity (NEP) of the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin (MRYRB) from 2001 to 2019 were estimated and utilized to characterize the vegetation carbon source/sink. Additionally, four factors, namely, average surface temperature (AST), root-zone soil moisture (RM), drought frequency (DF), and drought intensity (DI), were selected and a multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model was applied to assess the dominant factors influencing vegetation carbon source/sink dynamics at the spatial scale. The results indicated that: (1) MRYRB vegetation acted as a carbon sink, showing an increasing trend. Carbon sink was primarily located in Shaanxi’s central region, while carbon source was primarily located in Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi’s northern part. (2) Both the extent and severity of drought in the MRYRB showed a mitigating trend, presenting a spatial distribution of high-intensity low-frequency and low-intensity high-frequency. (3) AST, RM, DF, and DI had larger effects on carbon source than carbon sink. AST dominated mainly in northern Shanxi and Shaanxi, RM in central Shaanxi and Gansu, while DI and DF were concentrated in central Shaanxi and northern Shanxi.

Keywords:

• Carbon sink
• drought
• NEP
• MGWR
• sustainable development goals (SDGs)
• climate action

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to express their gratitude to researchers and institutions that provided data for this study. The authors would like to sincerely thank the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable time and effort devoted to the review process. The professional opinions and suggestions provided by the reviewers have been crucial for the improvement of this paper.

Author contributions

Xiaoliang Shi: Funding acquisition, Manuscript writing, Content review; Li Wang: Data analysis, Manuscript writing, Result interpretation; Hao Ding: Research calculation, Content review; Siqi Liu: Data collection, Research calculation; Wenyu Lv: Data collection, Research calculation. All authors have reviewed and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 52079103).