2026-10-12T22:25:52Z https://www.scidb.cn/oai

10.57760/sciencedb.41939 2026-07-03T11:43:25Z

2026-07-03 Vegetation greening exacerbates drought in the Tarim River Basin, Arid Regions of Central Asia doi:10.57760/sciencedb.41939 en The relationship between vegetation and drought remains debated, largely due to the lack of systematic quantification of the trade-off between meteorological and soil drought. Here, we selected the Tarim River Basin (TRB), a typical arid region in Central Asia, and employed a dynamic counterfactual scenario framework based on trend differencing to quantify the contribution of vegetation greening to the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the Standardized Soil Moisture Index (SSMI) from 1990 to 2022, evaluate its net benefit on drought, and reveal the underlying mechanisms. The results show that vegetation greening mitigates meteorological drought at a rate of 0.0004 yr-1, but exacerbates soil drought at a rate of -0.0013 yr-1, the net benefit shows an overall downward trend (-0.0009 yr-1). In 68% of the greening area, soil water consumption outweighs meteorological improvement. This is explained by water constraints in extremely arid regions: although vegetation greening enhances transpiration, increases relative humidity and precipitation, the limited soil moisture of TRB means that the same transpiration-induced water loss causes more severe soil drought than in humid regions, so negative effects far outweigh positive ones. Temperature rise is the core driver of soil drought in the TRB, with spring warming significantly accelerating drying; vegetation greening exerts an additional additive effect on this basis. These findings reveal the contradiction between “increasing greenness” and “declining water resources” in arid regions, and the net benefit framework provides quantitative support for optimizing ecological restoration strategies and sustainable water resource management in the TRB and similar arid regions worldwide. Vegetation greening; SPEI; SSMI; Net benefit; Tarim River Basin Meng Sitong Yaning Chen EMBARGO https://api.github.com/licenses/cc0-1.0 dataset Science Data Bank