Unveiling spatial variation in vegetation resilience to climate extremes can inform effective conservation planning under climate change. Although many conservation efforts are implemented on landscape scales, they often remain blind to landscape variation in vegetation resilience. We explored the distribution of drought‐resilient vegetation (i.e., vegetation that could withstand and quickly recover from drought) and its predictors across a heterogeneous coastal landscape under long‐term wetland conversion, through a series of high‐resolution satellite image interpretations, spatial analyses, and nonlinear modelling. We found that vegetation varied greatly in drought resilience across the coastal wetland landscape and that drought‐resilient vegetation could be predicted with distances to coastline and tidal channel. Specifically, drought‐resilient vegetation exhibited a nearly bimodal distribution and had a seaward optimum at ~2 km from coastline (corresponding to an inundation frequency of ~30%), a pattern particularly pronounced in areas further away from tidal channels. Furthermore, we found that areas with drought‐resilient vegetation were more likely to be eliminated by wetland conversion. Even in protected areas where wetland conversion was slowed, drought‐resilient vegetation was increasingly lost to wetland conversion at its landward optimum in combination with rapid plant invasions at its seaward optimum. Our study highlights that the distribution of drought‐resilient vegetation can be predicted using landscape features but without incorporating this predictive understanding, conservation efforts may risk failing in the face of climate extremes.

中文翻译：

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揭示沿海湿地恢复力植被的景观预测因子​​，为面对极端气候时的保护提供信息


揭示植被对极端气候适应能力的空间变化可以为气候变化下的有效保护规划提供信息。尽管许多保护工作是在景观尺度上实施的，但他们往往对植被恢复能力的景观变化视而不见。通过一系列高分辨率卫星图像解释、空间分析，我们探索了长期湿地转变下的异质沿海景观中抗旱植被（即能够承受干旱并迅速恢复的植被）的分布及其预测因素和非线性建模。我们发现，沿海湿地景观中植被的抗旱能力差异很大，并且可以根据距海岸线和潮汐通道的距离来预测植被的抗旱能力。具体来说，抗旱植被表现出近乎双峰的分布，并且在距海岸线约 2 公里处具有最佳的向海性（对应于约 30% 的淹没频率），这种模式在远离潮汐通道的地区尤其明显。此外，我们发现具有抗旱植被的地区更有可能因湿地转变而消失。即使在湿地转化速度减慢的保护区，抗旱植被也越来越多地因向陆最佳的湿地转化以及向海洋最佳的植物快速入侵而丧失。我们的研究强调，可以利用景观特征来预测抗旱植被的分布，但如果不结合这种预测性理解，面对极端气候，保护工作可能会面临失败的风险。