Liu et al. (2025) Carbon-Water Coupling and Ecosystem Resilience to Drought in the Yili-Balkhash Basin, Central Asia

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Water
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-12-13
• Authors: Zezheng Liu, Dong Cui, Zhicheng Jiang, Jingjing Yan, Yunhao Wu, Mao Wen, Junqi Liu, Luyao Liu
• DOI: 10.3390/w17243535

Research Groups

Not explicitly detailed in the provided text.

Short Summary

This study investigates ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE) and its resilience in the Yili-Balkhash Basin, revealing a significant decline in WUE within high-productivity forest ecosystems due to a decoupling of carbon and water cycle drivers during drought, and identifying immediate thermal stress and one-month ecological memory as key determinants of resilience.

Objective

• To investigate the spatiotemporal patterns of ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE) and its resilience in the ecologically vulnerable Yili-Balkhash Basin.
• To understand the underlying mechanisms driving changes in WUE, particularly the decoupling of carbon and water cycle drivers during drought periods.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Yili-Balkhash Basin, Central Asia (a critical watershed).
• Temporal Scale: Multi-year to decadal (inferred from "spatiotemporal patterns," "long-term drought legacy," and climate change context).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Machine learning-based attribution.
• Data sources: Not explicitly detailed, but likely includes remote sensing, reanalysis, and/or in-situ observations for variables such as Gross Primary Production (GPP), Evapotranspiration (ET), vapor pressure deficit (VPD), soil moisture, and surface thermal conditions.

Main Results

• Contrary to a basin-wide trend of increasing WUE, high-productivity forest ecosystems in the Yili-Balkhash Basin exhibit a significant decline in WUE.
• This decline is attributed to a fundamental decoupling between the drivers of carbon (GPP) and water (ET) cycles during drought periods. GPP shows a positive response to atmospheric aridity (vapor pressure deficit), while ET remains primarily controlled by soil moisture and surface thermal conditions.
• This driver asynchrony results in ET-dominated control over WUE across 65.8% of the basin, rendering forests particularly vulnerable.
• Ecosystem resilience is determined by the combined effects of immediate thermal stress and a one-month ecological memory, rather than long-term drought legacy.

Contributions

• Identifies an emerging vulnerability of high-productivity forest ecosystems to atmospheric aridity, challenging generalized basin-wide trends.
• Demonstrates the critical role of driver asynchrony between carbon and water cycles in exacerbating ecosystem vulnerability during drought.
• Provides novel insights into the determinants of ecosystem resilience, highlighting the importance of immediate thermal stress and short-term ecological memory over long-term drought history.
• Underscores the necessity of adopting process-based frameworks for robustly assessing ecosystem stability under a changing climate.

Funding

Not explicitly detailed in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Liu2025CarbonWater,
  author = {Liu, Zezheng and Cui, Dong and Jiang, Zhicheng and Yan, Jingjing and Wu, Yunhao and Wen, Mao and Liu, Junqi and Liu, Luyao},
  title = {Carbon-Water Coupling and Ecosystem Resilience to Drought in the Yili-Balkhash Basin, Central Asia},
  journal = {Water},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.3390/w17243535},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/w17243535}
}