Environmental resilience of rangeland ecosystems: assessment drought indices and vegetation trends on arid and semi-arid zones of Central Asia

The Central Asian (CA) rangelands is a part of the arid and semi-arid ecological zones and spatial extent of drylands in CA (Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan) is vast. Projections averaged across a suite of climate models, as measured between 1950-2012 by Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) estimated a progressively increasing drought risks across rangelands (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) especially during late summer and autumn periods, another index: Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) indicated drought anomalies for Turkmenistan and partly in Uzbekistan (between 1950-2000). On this study, we have combined a several datasets of drought indices (SPIE, PET, temperature_ ToC and precipitation_ P) for better estimation of resilience/non-resilience of the ecosystems after warming the temperature in the following five countries, meanwhile, warming of climate causing of increasing rating of degradations and extension of desertification in the lowland and foothill zones of the landscape and consequently surrounding experienced of a raising balance of evapotranspiration (ET0). The study concluded, increasing drought anomalies which is closely related with raising (ET0) in the lowland and foothill zones of CA indicated on decreasing of NDVI indices with occurred sandy and loamy soils it will resulting a loss of vegetation diversity (endangered species) and raising of wind speeds in lowlands of CA, but on regional level especially towards agricultural intensification (without rotation) it indicated no changes of greenness index. It was investigated to better interpret how vegetation feedback modifies the sensitivity of drought indices associated with raising tendency of air temperature and changes of cold and hot year seasons length in the territory of CA.