Drought is complex and is also one of the main disasters affecting China. Exploring the response of agricultural drought and meteorological drought to climatic factors helps us to understand the causes of drought. In this paper, we evaluated the temporal and spatial characteristics of soil drought and meteorological drought (SMD) and explored their responses to climatic factors and latent heat fluxes (LHF), and then explained their variation from the perspective of atmospheric circulation. The following results were obtained. (1) Meteorological drought has gradually increased in the Liaohe River Basin, on the North China Plain, and on the Loess Plateau while average soil moisture has been maintained at only approximately 25%. The impacts of drought are very serious in these regions. (2) LHF response to short time-scale (3-month scale) drought performance is high in the dry season, and the regions with high correlation coefficients are spatially distributed and concentrated in the monsoon climate zone. The regions with high correlation coefficients between drought and LHFs on long time scales (12-month scale) are concentrated in the coastal basin of southeast China. (3) Short- and long-term SMDs showed highly responsive and significant relationships with PDO, showing variations in the southeast coastal basin, the Pearl River basin, the northwest inland basin and the eastern part of the Heilongjiang basin, with a maximum correlation coefficient of 0.21 (p < 0.01). The short-term SMD in the northwestern inland region was significantly negatively correlated with AMO (correlation coefficient of −0.19, p < 0.01). the Nino3.4 index is significantly positively correlated with the SMD in the southeast coastal region of China, with a maximum correlation coefficient of 0.23 (p < 0.01). The decrease in convective precipitation led to a stronger association between soil and meteorological drought and climatic factors. This study helps to reveal the changing patterns of SMDs and can also be used globally to identify the local development patterns of drought under climate change.

The combined effects of tillage and organic amendments on microbial respiration and its contribution to soil hydraulic conductivity are still uncertain in the 0–40 cm layer of a loess soil. We conducted a two-year field experiment to explore the effects of organic amendments, tillage and their interaction on soil microbial respiration, aggregate stability, pore parameters, and hydraulic conductivity on the Loess Plateau. Three tillage methods (conventional tillage (CT), deep tillage (DT) and no tillage (NT)) plus five fertilizer treatments (mineral fertilizer (control) alone and along with 20 t ha⁻¹ wheat straw (MWS), wheat husk (MWH), farmyard soil (MFS) and bioorganic fertilizer (MBF)) were set up as experimental treatments. The findings demonstrated that the organic amendments significantly increased the soil microbial respiration and saturated hydraulic conductivity compared to the control in the 0–10 cm and 10–20 cm layers. Soil microbial respiration had indirect effects on hydraulic conductivity by improving the water aggregate stability and macroporosity. Additionally, the interaction effects of tillage and organic amendments on the pore and hydrological parameters were significant in the 20–40 cm layer. NT-MBF resulted in the greatest saturated hydraulic conductivity, which was directly correlated with the soil’s strong pore organization. Given the issue of subsurface soil compaction in our study area, it is recommended that local farmers adopt NT-MBF to enhance the soil’s microbial, structural and hydrological properties.

Drought is a multifaceted natural disaster that can impact the ecological environment, crop yield, and social economy through the hydrological cycle process. Meteorological drought occurs first, which then propagates to other forms. This study presents the propagation characteristics of meteorological to hydrological drought in different river basins of China. The main drivers of drought propagation are also quantitatively analyzed in this study. The standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized runoff index (SRI) were used to describe meteorological and hydrological drought, respectively. The Songhua and Liaohe River Basin (SLRB), Haihe River Basin (HARB), Huaihe River Basin (HURB), Yellow River Basin (YRB), Yangtze River Basin (YARB), Pearl River Basin (PRB), Southeast Basin (SEB), Southwest Basin (SWB), and Continental Basin (CB) were analyzed in this study. The precipitation and runoff datasets were used to compute the SPI and SRI, respectively. The results showed that the drought propagation time was mainly 1–3 months in China. In general, drought propagation had a stronger relationship in the central and eastern river basins of China than in the western river basins (SWB and CB). Spring and winter had a weaker drought propagation relationship than autumn and winter. Drought propagation was driven by precipitation in the HURB, YARB, SEB, and PRB; soil moisture and precipitation were drivers in the HARB and YRB; moreover, soil moisture and potential evapotranspiration were drivers in the SLRB and CB. This study improves the understanding of the characteristics and drivers of drought propagation in droughts in river basins. Therefore, this study might provide a reference to reveal the mechanism of drought.

As an important part of the large-scale ecological restoration project of “Grain for Green”, the planting area of jujube (Ziziphus jujuba) trees has increased significantly in the hilly region on the Loess Plateau of China, which aims to improve water and soil conservation and develop economic prospects of the region. Understanding the long-term effects of expanding orchards and the responses of soil water dynamics to drought are important for orchard management. Therefore, we use a space-for-time substitution to investigate the variations of plant-available water storage in returning cropland to orchards with different stand ages (2, 6, 10, and 15 years) in a normal year (NY2014, 442.1 mm rainfall) and the next year with low annual precipitation (DY2015, 388 mm rainfall). The results showed that the plant-available water storage in jujube orchards decreased with increasing stand age, and the trend was most obvious in the 60–180 cm layer. The mature stands (10 and 15 years) primarily absorbed soil water from the deep layer (180–300 cm) in DY2015, leading to negative values of plant-available water storage. The whole soil profiles were all subjected to severe water deficits in our study. The findings will help guide rain-fed orchard management in the loess hilly region of China and similar dryland regions.