Advancing Drought Resilience in Mediterranean Drylands: Insights from Vegetation-Soil Moisture Interactions and Remote Sensing in Keri Forest, Crete

Mediterranean drylands are facing systemic drought risks due to prolonged imbalances between water availability and ecological demands. This study investigates the vegetation-soil moisture dynamics in Keri Forest, Crete, over a 24-year period by use of an emissivity-based Soil Moisture Index (SMI). Field validation demonstrated the SMI's effectiveness as a proxy for near-surface soil moisture, providing valuable insights into soil moisture variability across landcover types.

The findings challenge the notion that drought impacts arise solely from isolated events, supporting a continuum-based perspective of droughts as persistent stressors. Key results indicate that shrublands, despite their limited water storage capacity, recover more rapidly from disturbances compared to forests, which show greater sensitivity to cascading drought and fire impacts. This highlights the non-linear and multi-variate nature of drought hazard-impact relationships, where interactions between vegetation type and soil water availability vary significantly. SMI trends revealed that soil moisture in shrublands shows less year-to-year variability, suggesting greater stability under stress, while forested areas showed a stronger correlation between vegetation density and soil moisture depletion during prolonged dry periods.

These insights redefine drought resilience and emphasize the need for targeted interventions tailored to landcover type. Shrubland conservation emerges as a cost-effective strategy to maintain ecosystem stability, while the susceptibility of forests to cascading impacts calls for adaptive management through low-density reforestation and improved fire prevention strategies. The study highlights methodological limitations, including temporal data gaps in the Landsat data, and stresses the need to integrate satellite-derived indices with localized measurements to better quantify cascading drought risks.

The findings highlight the importance of multi-sectoral strategies to enhance resilience in Mediterranean drylands. Effective drought risk management must transcend early warnings by adopting systemic, localized, and adaptive approaches to address the diversity of ecosystem responses and vulnerabilities under climate change.