Distinctive water bodies surrounding lakes: An effective indicator for drought monitoring and assessment

The response mechanisms of surface water to drought and the potential and performance of water body changes in drought monitoring and assessment remain insufficiently elucidated. We take the Poyang Lake Basin, which suffers from drastic water body changes and frequent droughts, as a representative. Through integrating multisource data to extract long-term precise water bodies, we construct standardized water body area/number anomaly indices (SAAI/SNAI). Subsequently, we quantify the correlation and time lag response between SAAI, SNAI and drought. Our findings reveal that overall, water body area and number in the Poyang Lake Basin all exhibit a significant correlation with typical drought indices. Among them, the large water body area has a higher correlation coefficient with drought, making it a more effective indicator for drought monitoring. Water body changes of Poyang Lake surrounding area offer a more precise reflection of drought conditions than other sub-basins and exhibit greater sensitivity to drought. Meanwhile, water body area changes in Poyang Lake surrounding area lag behind meteorological drought by approximately half a month. And the basin’s water body area can typically respond with changes to some prolonged and severe hydrological droughts about 1 to 2 months in advance. We propose an integrated mechanism for drought monitoring and assessment informed by these conclusions and use actual drought events for qualitative validation. The results indicate that it is possible to assess water body drought conditions for the next approximately half month based on current meteorological drought conditions. Also, combining water body area changes with meteorological drought severity can aid in evaluating hydrological drought conditions for the following about 1–2 months. We extend our investigation to explore the universality of these phenomenon across eight shallow lakes globally characterized by significant water fluctuations. The results reveal that the water body changes in most of these lakes exhibit good potential for drought monitoring and assessment, and present a strong consistency with deep soil moisture, allowing for the accurate reflection of deep soil drought conditions. The lag response patterns between water bodies and drought in Dongting Lake, Hongze Lake, and Tonlé Sap Lake—also situated in the monsoon climate zone—are more similar to those observed in Poyang Lake. These distinctive lake water bodies can serve as an innovative indicator for drought monitoring and assessment, providing potential support for endeavors in drought prevention and mitigation.