Spatiotemporal drought propagation and awareness related to climate-water-soil-vegetation dynamic interactions over the Korean Peninsula

Drought is a creeping climatological phenomenon that is difficult to describe accurately a recognition of its onset and propagation, unlike rapid onset natural hazards, such as floods and wildfires. There is no unanimous definition of drought, due to the complexity of its generating mechanisms, but it can be classified into various types: meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, socio-economic, and ecological. Drought complexity results in the loss of crop production, which has a direct impact on food security in Asian countries, such as Korea, Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand. In recent years, North and South Korea have experienced extreme droughts and water scarcity problems that have influenced agriculture, food prices, and crop production. We have assessed spatio-temporal dynamics of drought propagation and awareness over the Korean Peninsula. Our research examines dynamically coupled climate-vegetation-evapotranspiration feedbacks and analyzes the links between climate, soil moisture, water resources, and vegetation greenness of historical drought events using a suite of drought indices, remote sensing data, and observed data. Though meteorological and hydrological droughts have been analyzed over large spatial scales, the impacts of water scarcity have typically been addressed at a watershed scale. In this study, we explore how droughts and water scarcity impact larger, more complex spatiotemporal domains by combining evidence from climate, hydrological, soil moisture, and water resource systems. The results further highlight the value and need for more accurate characterizations of the onset and propagation of droughts and reveal a relationship between the duration and severity of droughts and their recovery periods.