We mapped 13 plant communities along the lower Tarim River using field surveys and satellite images to understand how vegetation relates to water availability. The communities differed along the river, with distance from the channel, and with groundwater depth. Wetland plants occurred where groundwater was shallow, while drought-tolerant communities were more common where it was deeper. This map provides a baseline for targeted monitoring and restoration under long-term managed water releases.

We tracked heatwaves over mainland China as continuous events moving through space and time. Since 2012, heatwaves have become less a matter of more events and more a matter of stronger event processes: longer duration, larger affected area, greater cumulative heat, and longer travel distance. These results suggest that heatwave monitoring should track event persistence and mobility, not only local frequency or intensity.

Using evidence from meteorological stations, this study assessed the climatic, hydrological, and ecological aridity changes in global drylands and their associated mechanisms. A decoupling between atmospheric, hydrological, and vegetation aridity was found. This highlights the added value of using station-scale data to assess dryland change as a complement to results based on coarse-resolution reanalysis data and land surface models.

In studies on the relationship between ecosystem functions and climate and plant traits, previously used data-driven methods such as multiple regression and random forest may be inadequate for representing causality due to limitations such as covariance between variables. Based on FLUXNET site data, we used a causal graphical model to revisit the control of climate and vegetation traits over ecosystem functions.