Temporal evolution of soil drought stress and its relationship with climate change for tea plantations in the subtropical–warm temperate climate transition zone of China

Summary

Tea ( Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze) plantation represents one of the most important artificial vegetation types in the subtropical–warm temperate climate transition zone of China. Soil drought stress is an important factor limiting the growth of tea plantation, but its long-term evolution characteristics and relationship with climate change have yet to be quantitatively analyzed. In this study, we employed the Biome-BGCMuSo model to simulate ecohydrological dynamics over the past 60 years (1961–2020) for tea plantations in the climate transition zone. The long-term evolution of soil drought stress was analyzed based on the annual and seasonal average soil drought stress index (AveSDSI). The relationships between the interannual trends and fluctuations of AveSDSI with climate factors were