A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur has warned that India’s forests and farmlands are facing a surge in what they call “ecological droughts”, long-term moisture stress that damages entire ecosystems.
Their paper looks at how ecological droughts are increasing in India with the changing summer monsoon and human interventions. Published in Communications Earth & Environment, the paper is authored by Rahul Kashyap, Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath, and Vikas Kumar Patel from IIT Kharagpur’s CORAL laboratory.
“This study investigates the complex non-linear interactions among the atmosphere, land, and ocean systems in relation to ecological droughts in India during the Indian Summer Monsoon,” said corresponding author Kuttippurath. “It reveals a rise in ecological droughts across sensitive regions such as the Himalaya, Northeast India, eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), Central India, and southern semi-arid India. These regions also show increasing meteorological, land evaporative, and atmospheric aridity.” The paper adds that these are “regions with ample moisture and optimum warmth to support vegetation, yet they are subjected to ecological droughts now.”
“Ecological droughts are increasing in the ecologically fragile pristine forests and croplands that decline vegetation health in India,” write the authors in the paper. Using machine-learning and remote sensing data from 2000–2019, they found that meteorological aridity contributed about 23% and ocean warming contributed about 18% in driving ecological droughts.
“Our analysis identifies meteorological aridity and ocean warming as the main drivers of ecological droughts, with ocean warming indirectly influencing droughts through changes in moisture and thermal conditions,” Kuttippurath told Mongabay-India. “The westward shift of the monsoon system has intensified droughts in eastern and southern India, in addition to anthropogenic pressures.”
According to the paper, “the rising ecological droughts in India are driving browning of pristine forests and intensive croplands during the moisture rich monsoon season,” leading to weakened forest carbon sinks and reduced crop yields.
“These changes endanger agriculture, forests, and socio-economic stability by altering ecohydrological balance and land–atmosphere feedbacks that also affect regional climate,” Kuttippurath said. “The study underscores the need for improved monitoring of carbon–water cycles, sustainable land management, and adaptive policies to ensure environmental sustainability and food security under climate change.”
The authors conclude, “It is high time to integrate ecological droughts in the climate policies and give due respect in various climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.”
Banner image: Monsoon in a village in Odisha. Image by Santosh.mbahrm via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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