Patterns and drivers of vegetation resilience across China and the negative impact of warm droughts

Ecological resilience—defined as the capacity of ecosystems to withstand perturbations—is an important dimension of ecosystem stability. However, the spatial patterns and underlying drivers of resilience in forests relative to grasslands remain poorly understood. Using a temporal autocorrelation index (AC1) derived from satellite-based vegetation indices, we assessed high-resolution (250 m) vegetation resilience from 2000 to 2020 across China’s natural terrestrial vegetation. We found that vegetation in forest-dominated regions was more resilient than in grassland-dominated regions, with divergent associations to climate, vegetation, soil, topography, and human drivers. Specifically, forest resilience was primarily associated with climate variables, with path analysis indicating a potential indirect link through vegetation characteristics. By contrast, grassland resilience was strongly related to soil and topographic properties. Particularly, among the climate variables, long-term warm drought condition represented by inverted SPEI (the negative of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index), generally showed spatial negative associations with resilience, especially in temperate steppe and subtropical forest regions. Particularly, resilience of cold forests and high-altitude grasslands showed weaker or even positive relationship with warm droughts. These findings highlight the threats posed by ongoing climate change to vegetation resilience, and emphasize the need for ecosystem-specific strategies to enhance resilience in the future.