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In recent years, extreme drought events in the United States have seen increases in frequency and severity underlining a need to improve our understanding of vegetation resilience and adaptation. Flash droughts are extreme events marked by rapid dry down of soils due to lack of precipitation, high temperatures, and dry air. These events are also associated with reduced preparation, response, and management time windows before and during drought which exacerbate their detrimental impacts on people and food systems. Improvements in actionable information for flash drought management are informed by atmospheric and land surface processes, including responses and feedbacks from vegetation. Phenologic state, or growth stage, is an important metric for modeling how vegetation interacts with the atmosphere. We investigate how uncertainty in vegetation phenology propagates through vegetation responses during drought and non-drought periods by coupling a land-surface hydrology model to a predictive phenology model. We identify plant processes that influence vegetation responses to drought and assess the role of vegetation in the partitioning of carbon, water, and energy fluxes. We selected study sites in Kansas, USA where extreme drought events have been observed, in particular the flash drought of 2012, and where AmeriFlux eddy covariance towers provide data which can be used to evaluate water movement between the land (surface and subsurface) and the atmosphere. We evaluate the evolution of plant phenology, water use, and productivity using different water stress events. Results show that phenological responses using model parameters generated from periods of average precipitation show slower responses to drought as compared to parameters generated to reflect isohydric or anisohydric tendencies. Evapotranspiration (ET) and gross primary productivity (GPP) show similarly timed responses to water stress. We find plants alter water use strategies under extreme drought, with plants nearly halting atmospheric water and carbon exchanges when under stress. Decreases in uncertainty from ensemble estimates of GPP and ET during the flash drought period reduce to winter levels implying variability in plant life stage and functionality during drought periods are similar to those of dormant months. These results have implications for improving predictions of drought impacts on vegetation.

The relationship between soil moisture (SM) and evaporative fraction (EF) is an important component of land-atmosphere interactions. Frequently, land-atmosphere studies are based on land-surface models and not on observations. This study examines SM-EF interactions over the United States Southern Great Plains using both in situ observations and simulations from the Variable Infiltration Capacity hydrologic model. Specifically, we evaluate how the relationship between SM and EF varies by season, we determine why these variations occur, and we compare model-derived and observed SM-energy flux relationships. Data from four sites (2004-2008) that are part of the United States Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation MeasurementSouthern Great Plains network are used in this study. Results show that SM-EF interactions in both the model and observations are in general agreement with the evaporative regime theory described in past studies. That is, EF is a linear function of SM when SM is between the wilting point and the critical value, and when SM is above the critical value, EF is not dependent on SM. However, SM-EF relationships vary substantially from year to year. EF is a linear function of SM only when daily net radiation is above normal. Our results suggest that the strength of SM-EF interactions is not solely controlled by soil wetness but is also strongly influenced by daily net radiation and meteorological conditions.