Abstract: Drought is the most common and complex meteorological disaster in the world, which weakens the carbon sink function of terrestrial ecosystem. Exploring the response of vegetation to drought and choosing sensitive factors for drought detection will be helpful to obtain the impact of drought on vegetation and to understand the response process and the mechanism of vegetation to drought stress. Based on the Solar-Induced chlorophyll Fluorescence (SIF) and the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), a maximum correlation coefficient method was used to investigate the response of vegetation photosynthesis to meteorological drought in China during the growing season from 2000 to 2018. Sensitivity and response time scale of vegetation to drought was compared for different drought levels and different vegetation types. The results showed that: (1) about 75.05% of total areas of China had a significant positive correlation between SIF and SPEI. These areas were mainly distributed in the northeast, southwest and Qinghai Tibet Plateau of China. The response time scale of most regions to SPEI was mainly medium and short term. (2) The proportion of SIF to SPEI was the lowest in spring, the highest in summer, and slightly decreased in autumn. The response time scale to drought was mainly short-term in spring, while the region with long response time scale in summer was increased compared with in spring. (3) The semi-arid region was the most sensitive to drought, while the arid region was the weakest. The response time scale of different climatic regions to drought was mainly short-term. (4) The selected vegetation types responded to drought in a short time scale. Grassland was the most sensitive to drought, while woodland and cropland were relatively weak. Besides, broad-leaved forest was more sensitive to drought than coniferous forest. The results showed that under different drought gradients and different vegetation types, SIF could quickly reflect the impact of environmental stress on vegetation photosynthesis.

Key words: Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), Meteorological drought, Standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), Response of vegetation to drought