Flash droughts exacerbate global vegetation loss and delay recovery.

ABSTRACT: The increasing incidence of flash droughts globally presents a great challenge to the agriculture sector, ecosystem resilience and water resource systems. Here we introduce a methodology that improves the accuracy of quantifying drought-induced global vegetation loss (using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)-derived metric). Our results reveal that NDVI loss during flash droughts (9.0%) is approximately 1.5 times higher than that during conventional droughts (5.3%), highlighting the increasing role of flash droughts as the key driver of drought-induced NDVI loss worldwide. Furthermore, we identify a significant upward trend (1.8% per decade) in global NDVI loss due to flash droughts, primarily driven by the increasing frequency of such events, which account for 81.2% of the over

SUBMITTER: Chai Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12804894 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature