Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Meteorological and Agricultural Drought on the Northern Slope of the Tianshan Mountains: Trends, Propagation Processes, and Triggering Thresholds

作者：Peng Wang, Congcang Tang, Hongfei Tao, Jiang Li, Xiaomeng Lou, Zhenkun Zhang, Haonan Zhu · 发表于：Agriculture · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.3390/agriculture16151636 · 研究领域：Hydrology and Drought Analysis、Climate variability and models、Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics

The propagation of meteorological drought into agricultural drought is a critical stage in drought hazard development and risk accumulation. Characterizing its spatiotemporal evolution, propagation processes, and triggering conditions is therefore essential for agricultural drought mitigation and water-resource regulation in arid regions. Taking the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, China, as the study area, this study used monthly ERA5-Land reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts for 1980–2022 to derive the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index and Standardized Soil Moisture Index. Three-dimensional drought-event identification, the Mann–Kendall trend test, cross-wavelet transform, wavelet coherence analysis, and Copula analysis were integrated to investigate drought dynamics, multiscale propagation, and triggering thresholds. This event–process–threshold framework links individual drought-event evolution with lagged propagation characteristics and probabilistic triggering conditions, extending previous studies that focused primarily on correlation or propagation time. The results showed that a total of 92 meteorological drought events and 65 agricultural drought events were identified, with agricultural droughts generally exhibiting greater persistence and cumulative severity. Meteorological droughts were concentrated mainly in the central-eastern region, whereas agricultural droughts occurred predominant...