Drought, Evapotranspiration, and Climate-Resilient Agricultural Water Managements

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is altering the frequency, duration, intensity, and spatial distribution of droughts worldwide. Rising temperatures, changing precipitation regimes, increasing atmospheric evaporative demand, and shifts in crop-growing seasons are modifying terrestrial water and energy balances. These changes directly affect evapotranspiration, soil moisture, crop water requirements, irrigation demand, water availability, and agricultural productivity. The impacts are particularly pronounced in arid, semi-arid, and drought-prone regions, although increasingly frequent water deficits and compound climate extremes are also emerging in traditionally water-abundant agricultural areas.

Evapotranspiration represents a key link among the climate system, terrestrial hydrological processes, vegetation dynamics, and agricultural water use. Reliable estimation and prediction of evapotranspiration are therefore essential for drought monitoring, irrigation scheduling, crop-yield assessment, water-resource allocation, and the development of climate-resilient agricultural systems. Advances in satellite remote sensing, ground-based observations, crop and hydrological modeling, artificial intelligence, data assimilation, and climate projections are providing new opportunities to quantify the impacts of evapotranspiration and drought across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

At the same time, adapting agricultural water management to climate change requires more than improvements in irrigation efficiency. Effective adaptation depends on understanding the interactions between climate variability, drought development, crop water use, soil moisture, ground-water and surface-water availability, farming practices, institutional arrangements, and water-allocation policies. Integrated approaches are needed to translate climate and hydrological information into practical strategies that enhance water-use efficiency, agricultural productivity, food security, and the resilience of coupled human–water–agricultural systems.

This Special Issue aims to bring together recent advances in understanding, monitoring, modeling, and managing drought, evapotranspiration, and agricultural water resources under a changing climate. We welcome original research articles, review papers, methodological studies, and regional or comparative assessments that investigate climate-driven changes in agricultural water cycles and develop effective adaptation and management strategies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The impacts of climatechange on the frequency, duration, severity, and spatial characteristics of meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and ecological drought;
• Interactions between drought, heatwaves, vapor pressure deficit, soil moisture, and other compound climate extremes;
• Observations, estimations, and predictionsof reference, potential, actual, crop, and ecosystem evapotranspiration;
• Remote sensing of evapotranspiration, drought, soil moisture, crop water stress, and agricultural water use;
• Land–atmosphere interactions and feedbackamong evapotranspiration, vegetation, soil moisture, and climate;
• Effects of climate variability and climate change on crop water requirements, irrigation demand, crop productivity, and water-use efficiency;
• Agricultural drought indicators, early-warning systems, seasonal forecasts, and climate services;
• Crop, hydrological, land-surface, and integrated modeling under historical and future climate scenarios;
• Applications of machine learning, artificial intelligence, data assimilation, and multi-source data fusion in drought and evapotranspiration studies;
• Climate-resilient irrigation scheduling, deficit irrigation, precision irrigation, and water-saving technologies;
• Rainwater harvesting, soil-water conservation, managed aquifer recharge, and conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater;
• Nature-based solutions, conservation agriculture, crop diversification, and other adaptation measures for drought resilience;
• Water allocation, water productivity, virtual water, and water–food–energy–ecosystem nexus assessments;
• Socioeconomic impacts of agricultural drought and water scarcity, including impacts on food security and rural livelihoods;
• Governance, institutions, policies, and decision-support systems for climate-resilient agricultural water management;
• Regional studies and cross-regional comparisons, particularly in arid, semi-arid, Mediterranean, monsoon, and other drought-vulnerable agricultural regions.

Dr. Shang Chen
Dr. Huiqing Bai
Dr. Ning Yao
Guest Editors

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• climate change
• drought
• drought monitoring
• evapotranspiration
• crop water requirements
• water-use efficiency
• agricultural water management
• climate extremes
• climate adaptation
• food security