New Tool Helps Track Drought and Plant Stress
Research Update
Board Member Lauren Lowman and PhD Candidate Nicholas Corak of Wake’s Environmental Dynamics Lab, together with Peter E. Thornton of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have published a paper in Scientific Data: “A high resolution, gridded product for vapor pressure deficit using Daymet.” The team have developed a new model for monitoring drought and plant water stress across the U.S., parts of Canada, and Mexico.
Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is a key indicator used to understand how much moisture plants are losing to the atmosphere, making it crucial for tracking droughts and managing landscapes. Until now, gridded products of global and regional VPD have not been freely available from existing tools like satellite remote sensing, model reanalysis, or ground observation datasets.
The team presents two versions of the first gridded VPD product for the region, which uses temperature and humidity data from the Daymet dataset, then scales the data based on climate and land cover. The team hopes their product will resource aid investigations of drought and wildfire disturbances and ultimately inform land management strategies.
