ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Clim.
Sec. Climate, Ecology and People
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2025.1656424
Characteristics of spatial and temporal changes of drought in the Inner Mongolia section of the Yellow River Basin based on geodetector
Provisionally accepted
Sinan Wang1
Kairan Xu1Xiaoming Ma2*Wei Hu1JIanwei Zhao3Fuqiang Wang3Donghui Su2Zhuo Zhang2Mingyang Li4- 1China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, China
- 2Water Resources Research Institute of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hohhot, China
- 3College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China
- 4Water Resources Research Institute of Shandong Province, Jinan, China
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As an important ecological barrier and energy, agriculture and animal husbandry base in the northern part of China, the water resources security and ecological sustainability of the Inner Mongolia section of the Yellow River Basin are crucial for regional and even national development. In this study, the crop water stress index (CWSI) was constructed based on MOD16 evapotranspiration data from 2001 to 2024, aiming to reveal the spatial and temporal evolution of drought in the Inner Mongolia section of the Yellow River Basin, and to analyze the main drivers and their interactions by using a geoprobe model. The research results indicate that, the interannual fluctuations in potential evapotranspiration (PET) and the drought index (CWSI) in the study area are relatively stable, while the interannual variability in actual evapotranspiration (ET) is significant; the average value of CWSI is 0.85, indicating that the study area was in a state of severe drought throughout the study period. The CWSI indicates that large areas are in a state of severe drought; however, over 76% of the study area shows a significant decline in CWSI. The CWSI values for all land use types showed a significant downward trend, with water bodies having the highest CWSI values and cropland the lowest, opposite to the ranking of ET values. NDVI, and air temperature were the primary driving factors influencing the spatial variability of CWSI in the study area, with average q values all exceeding 0.5. The interactions between precipitation and temperature (q values ranging from 0.72 to 0.95) and between precipitation and the digital elevation model (DEM) (q values ranging from 0.78 to 0.93) had the strongest explanatory power for CWSI spatial heterogeneity, both exceeding 0.81. This indicates the dominant role of meteorological factors and the significant influence of terrain and other underground factors on drought within the basin under specific combinations.
Keywords: Inner Mongolia section of the Yellow River Basin, CWSI, Geodetector, drivingfactors, drought monitoring
Received: 30 Jun 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Xu, Ma, Hu, Zhao, Wang, Su, Zhang and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaoming Ma, Water Resources Research Institute of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hohhot, China
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