Recovery of Vegetation Productivity from the Severe Decadal Drought in Mongolian Plateau.

Mongolian Plateau experienced the most severe decadal drought from 2000 to 2009 during the past two millennium years. This severe decadal drought induces significant decrease in vegetation growth and vegetation degradation, and consequently decrease the number of livestock and impair livelihood of people in Mongolian Plateau. Whether vegetation productivity has recovered from this severe decadal drought is unclear yet. If the vegetation productivity has recovered during the 2010s, what factors drive this recovery. Here, we investigate the change in vegetation productivity with the near-infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIR_V) from MODIS products between 2000 and 2018, and identify the main factors influencing the recovery of vegetation productivity from drought. We find that the integrated NIR_V in summer and spring contribute 67.2% and 20.2% to the recovery of NIR_V in growing season respectively. The recovery of spring NIR_V is mainly attributed to higher soil moisture in March, which comes from larger snow water equivalent. The recovery of summer NIR_V is mainly driven by the early-summer (June and July) precipitation. Our findings highlight the wetter soil before growing season could alleviate growing season drought and enhance the resistance of vegetation growth to shortage of precipitation during growing season.