Zhang et al. (2025) Studying the impacts of land use types and soil textures on agricultural drought in Ziya river basin using SWDI

Identification

• Journal: Scientific Reports
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-11-26
• Authors: Yuefen Zhang, Yimin Hao, Jiyang Tian, Qingqing Zhang, Ronghua Liu, Jianzhu Li
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-26246-z

Research Groups

• State Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Water Security, Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, China
• State Key Laboratory of Hydraulic Engineering Intelligent Construction and Operation, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
• Research Center on Flood & Drought Disaster Reduction, Ministry of Water Resources, Beijing, China
• Key Laboratory of Water Ecology Remediation and Protection at Headwater Regions of Big Rivers, Ministry of Water Resources, Xining, China

Short Summary

This study investigates the impacts of land use types and soil textures on agricultural drought (AD) in the semi-arid Ziya River Basin (ZRB) using the Soil Water Deficit Index (SWDI). It finds that Forest and Grassland exhibit higher drought resistance, while Cropland, Waters, and Urban Land are more susceptible to severe droughts, and Clay soil texture shows better drought resistance compared to Sand and Loam.

Objective

• To investigate the feasibility of the Soil Water Deficit Index (SWDI) in a semi-arid area.
• To evaluate the impacts of different land use types on agricultural drought (AD).
• To evaluate the impacts of different soil textures on agricultural drought (AD).

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Ziya River Basin (ZRB), China (46,328 km²).
• Temporal Scale: 2000–2018 (monthly and annual scales).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Soil Water Deficit Index (SWDI) for agricultural drought, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for meteorological drought, Runs theory for drought characteristics (duration and severity).
• Data sources:
  • High spatial-resolution (1 km) precipitation data (1901–2021) from Peng et al. (2020), based on CRU and WorldClim.
  • Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with 30 m resolution from Geospatial Data Cloud.
  • Land use data (2010) from http://www.resdc.cn.
  • Chinese soil dataset-based Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.2).
  • Monthly rainfall data (1 km resolution, 1961–2018) from http://www.tpdc.ac.cn/zh-hans/.
  • SMCI1.0 (Soil Moisture of China by in situ data, version 1.0) with 1 km resolution (2000–2020) from https://doi.org/10.11888/Terre.tpdc.272415.

Main Results

• Annual variations of soil moisture and precipitation in ZRB show broad similarity, while water shortage in the vadose zone exhibits an opposite trend. Winter is identified as the season with the lowest soil moisture levels.
• SWDI is applicable for characterizing AD in ZRB, showing good consistency with meteorological drought (MD) onset and end times, but often indicating more severe AD than MD.
• Land use types significantly impact AD: Forest and Grassland show greater drought resistance with lower average duration (4.12 and 3.92 months) and severity (7.76 and 7.93), while Cropland, Waters, and Urban Land are more susceptible to severe droughts (duration > 5.39 months; severity > 11).
• Soil texture also significantly affects AD: Clay exhibits the best drought resistance with the lowest average duration (3.24 months) and severity (5.13), whereas Sand (duration 4.56 months; severity 8.32) and Loam (duration 5.09 months; severity 10.32) are more prone to severe AD.

Contributions

• Systematically quantifies the distinct roles of land use types and soil textures in the evolution of agricultural drought in a semi-arid region (Ziya River Basin).
• Validates the applicability of the Soil Water Deficit Index (SWDI) for agricultural drought monitoring, assessment, and early warning in semi-arid environments.
• Provides practical recommendations for agricultural management and drought resistance strategies by highlighting the varying drought susceptibility of different land use types and soil textures.

Funding

• Young Scientists Project of the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFC3082200)
• Open Research Fund Program of Key Laboratory for Water Ecology Management and Protection in River Source Areas, Ministry of Water Resources (Grant No. 2025slbsy06)

Citation

@article{Zhang2025Studying,
  author = {Zhang, Yuefen and Hao, Yimin and Tian, Jiyang and Zhang, Qingqing and Liu, Ronghua and Li, Jianzhu},
  title = {Studying the impacts of land use types and soil textures on agricultural drought in Ziya river basin using SWDI},
  journal = {Scientific Reports},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1038/s41598-025-26246-z},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-26246-z}
}