Divergent vegetation recovery shaped by drought, heat and compound extremes

Compound drought and heat extremes (CDHEs) under global warming pose significant threats to terrestrial ecosystems. However, the concurrent impacts of heat events and diverse drought types, as well as 3D (longitude, latitude, and time) vegetation recovery patterns, remain poorly understood. Here, we defined compound integrated drought-heat extremes through coupling heat extremes with diverse droughts and assessed basin-scale 3D vegetation recovery under varying hazards. The severity of CDHEs increased globally during 1982-2019, with the affected area expanding by 10 million km². Drought was a primary driver of vegetation loss, leading to longer vegetation recovery periods than either CDHEs or heat events, with approximately 44% of recovery events lasting longer than 10 months. In equatorial and high-latitude basins, CDHEs drove prolonged recovery events, though patterns varied among vegetation types. Spatially, vegetation loss generally kept pace with droughts, with extensive loss dominating low-latitude basins. This was less pronounced for CDHEs, which exhibited limited migration distances and could promote vegetation growth in some regions, including Europe and Central Asia. SHAP analysis revealed that temperature was a key factor shaping vegetation responses to CDHEs. Our study advances understanding of multivariate CDHEs, drought and heat impacts on vegetation responses, informing ecosystem management under climate change.