Ecosystems threatened by intensified drought with varied vulnerability in Europe

With climate change increasing the severity and duration of droughts, ecosystems may not be able to withstand such droughts causing a rapid collapse. However, at present we lack a quantitative understanding of this ‘buffer capacity’ of ecosystems to these deteriorating droughts. Here, we established continental-scale models to quantify the ecosystem vulnerability and associated drought characteristics impacts for different ecosystems in Europe using high spatial and temporal resolution drought and traits data from remote sensing. Specifically, we observed varying vulnerabilities across ecosystems where vegetation damage increases with earlier, longer and more intense droughts. However, we also found that vulnerability of most ecosystems increases disproportionally when drought severity begins to increase. Collectively, the results suggest that the intensified drought under future climate change could threaten a vast range of ecosystem types. The multi-characteristics assessment of ecosystem vulnerability based on traits in our study will help to forecast and quantify vegetation damage to future global climate change challenges and inform drought mitigation policies.