Definition and research guide
This page combines a MeSH definition, publication statistics and selected research abstracts. It is a starting point for reading the literature, not a medical textbook or a systematic evidence review.
Content available: 3 complete abstracts (598 words), 9 references. Full article text is not stored or reproduced here; follow the PMID, DOI or PMC links to read the original sources and their access terms.
Definition
Disasters linked to natural hazards including widespread fires, floods, storms, earthquakes and drought.These events may result in significant damage and loss of lives.
Definition: NLM Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) scope note (Public domain (U.S. National Library of Medicine); attribution requested). View the MeSH record.
Also known as: Natural Disaster; Disaster, Natural; Disasters, Natural.
Where it fits in the MeSH classification
- Broader topics
- Disasters
- Narrower topics
- Avalanches; Cyclonic Storms; Droughts; Earthquakes; Floods; Landslides; Tidal Waves; Tornadoes; Wildfires
Research landscape
PubMed indexes 35,795 records tagged with the MeSH heading “Natural Disasters” (counts retrieved 2026-10-31). 18,732 of them (52.3%) were published from 2020 onward, and the busiest period so far is 2020 onward with 18,732 records.
Reviews account for 2,167 records (6.1%) and meta-analyses for 215. Randomized controlled trials number 92 (0.3%) as a share of all records on the topic. Randomized trials make up only a small share of this literature, so much of what is known comes from laboratory, observational or descriptive work.
Show the data
| Period | Records |
|---|---|
| through 1999 | 0 |
| 2000-2009 | 1,426 |
| 2010-2019 | 15,852 |
| 2020 onward | 18,732 |
Publication-type chart data
| Type | Records | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews | 2,167 | 6.1% |
| Meta-analyses | 215 | 0.6% |
| Randomized controlled trials | 92 | 0.3% |
Method: PubMed query "Natural Disasters"[MeSH Terms] with publication-type and date filters, retrieved 2026-10-31.
Reading the evidence in public health and nutrition
Population and nutrition studies mostly observe what people eat, breathe or are exposed to and then look for links with health, which shows association and not proof of cause. Self-reported diet is imprecise, people who eat or live differently also differ in other ways, and effects measured across a population may not apply to one person. Check the study design, how exposure was measured, what else was accounted for and the size of the effect, not only whether it was statistically significant.
Evidence from open-access studies
These open-access studies come from PubMed’s best-match results for this heading (papers whose main topic it is), ranked here by citation count, with one recent addition. Each abstract is reproduced in full under its recorded open licence so that you can read the authors’ own words. They illustrate the literature; they are not a systematic summary of it. Citation counts measure attention, not reliability or clinical benefit.
| Study / authors | Year | Source label / design | Europe PMC citations | Licence / source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biodiversity effects under climate extremes intensify with aridity in grasslands but not forests | 2026 | Research article Design not recorded in structured metadata | 3 | cc by PMID 42457981 · DOI · PMC13441892 |
| Addressing global hotspots of drought-related crop production losses | 2026 | Research article Design not recorded in structured metadata | 3 | cc by PMID 42156736 · DOI · PMC13381596 |
| Recent high-severity wildfires in a dry-conifer landscape are unprecedented over five centuries and foretell future forest loss | 2026 | Research article Design not recorded in structured metadata | 2 | cc by PMID 42673462 · DOI · PMC13552868 |
Biodiversity effects under climate extremes intensify with aridity in grasslands but not forests [1]
Abstract reading summary — source excerpts
- Opening excerpt
- Biodiversity generally enhances ecosystem productivity, but whether such effects persist or intensify during climate extremes is unclear.
- Closing excerpt
- Our synthesis identifies when and where plant diversity most strongly enhances productivity, showing that its effects are the greatest under extreme drought in more arid grasslands.
- Interpretation limits
- Verbatim excerpts from the authors’ abstract; the closing excerpt may describe a finding, limitation or recommendation. Design, population, effect size and uncertainty have not been independently extracted or appraised. Read the complete abstract and linked paper before interpreting the findings.
Read complete abstract (156 words)
Biodiversity generally enhances ecosystem productivity, but whether such effects persist or intensify during climate extremes is unclear. Here we synthesized data from 75 biodiversity experiments across grasslands and forests to assess how aridity and soil nutrients modulate plant diversity effects under drought and heat extremes. Biodiversity most strongly enhanced productivity under extreme drought in more arid grasslands but had limited effects in forests under such conditions. More arid grasslands showed enhanced complementarity effects under extreme drought, whereas less arid grasslands favoured selection effects driven by productive species. Heat extremes did not produce comparable context-dependent changes in plant diversity effects across ecosystem types or aridity gradients. Soil nutrients did not have any detectable influence under either drought or heat extremes, suggesting that as climatic stress intensifies, hydric limitations override edaphic constraints. Our synthesis identifies when and where plant diversity most strongly enhances productivity, showing that its effects are the greatest under extreme drought in more arid grasslands.
Abstract reproduced from the open-access article under the recorded cc by licence; © the authors. PMID 42457981 · DOI · PMC13441892
Addressing global hotspots of drought-related crop production losses [2]
Abstract reading summary — source excerpts
- Opening excerpt
- Meeting future food demand requires transforming food systems to simultaneously increase production, reduce environmental impacts, and adapt to climate change.
- Closing excerpt
- This scalable framework enables proactive targeting of mitigation actions and investments to stabilize and increase global crop supply.
- Interpretation limits
- Verbatim excerpts from the authors’ abstract; the closing excerpt may describe a finding, limitation or recommendation. Design, population, effect size and uncertainty have not been independently extracted or appraised. Read the complete abstract and linked paper before interpreting the findings.
Read complete abstract (199 words)
Meeting future food demand requires transforming food systems to simultaneously increase production, reduce environmental impacts, and adapt to climate change. As climate variability increasingly affects production stability, understanding where cropping patterns are vulnerable to hydroclimatic stress is a missing but critical step toward improving agricultural production resilience. Here we combine gridded climate data, spatially explicit agricultural statistics, and empirical water-production functions to quantify global patterns of rainfed and irrigated crop-specific Drought Sensitivity-defined as the percent reduction in median yield under extreme hydroclimatic conditions-and drought-associated losses for 17 major crops, representing 75% of global production. This metric identifies locations where crops experience high climate variability and are most susceptible to drought-related losses. We estimate global losses of - 10.1% and - 6.8% in median rainfed and irrigated production, respectively, under historically observed extremes-enough calories to feed 2.1 billion people-and identify hotspots in the central US, eastern Brazil, the Mediterranean, and South Asia. Focusing on monsoon cereals (rice, maize, millet, sorghum), we show that sustainable irrigation expansion and targeted crop switching could avoid 62% of rainfed losses while increasing median production by 14%. This scalable framework enables proactive targeting of mitigation actions and investments to stabilize and increase global crop supply.
Abstract reproduced from the open-access article under the recorded cc by licence; © the authors. PMID 42156736 · DOI · PMC13381596
Recent high-severity wildfires in a dry-conifer landscape are unprecedented over five centuries and foretell future forest loss [3]
Abstract reading summary — source excerpts
- Opening excerpt
- Dry forests of the western United States evolved with frequent, spatially extensive, low-severity fires, followed by a century of fire exclusion.
- Closing excerpt
- Modern high-severity fire regimes appear incompatible with dry-conifer forest persistence.
- Interpretation limits
- Verbatim excerpts from the authors’ abstract; the closing excerpt may describe a finding, limitation or recommendation. Design, population, effect size and uncertainty have not been independently extracted or appraised. Read the complete abstract and linked paper before interpreting the findings.
Read complete abstract (243 words)
Dry forests of the western United States evolved with frequent, spatially extensive, low-severity fires, followed by a century of fire exclusion. Recently, these same forests have experienced large and increasingly severe fires causing widespread forest loss. To what extent do modern high-severity fires depart from pre-1900 fire regimes, and how do these departures affect the future persistence of dry-conifer forests? We address these questions using a multiscalar approach that combines the largest landscape-scale tree-ring fire-scar network in North America with neutral landscape model simulations in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico. Fire scars recorded a continuous 400-y history (ca. 1500-1900 CE) of frequent, low-severity fires across individual sites, landscapes, and centuries. We evaluated whether forests exhibiting this record could plausibly persist if they had historically burned under modern patterns of high-severity fire. Across the 240,000-ha Jemez landscape, high-severity fires from 1995-2024 burned 32% of fire-scar sites and 25% of dry-conifer forests. Within the Las Conchas Fire perimeter-a 61,000 ha area reburned by multiple fires-66% of fire-scar sites and 71% of forests were burned at high severity, erasing multiple centuries of forest and fire history. Simulations indicate that the probability of the observed fire-scar network persisting under modern high-severity fire rates is near-zero (P < 0.001). Projecting these dynamics forward indicates rapid loss of both dry-conifer forests and tree-ring fire histories-50% of modern dry-conifer forest will remain by 2055, and 24% by 2115. Modern high-severity fire regimes appear incompatible with dry-conifer forest persistence.
Abstract reproduced from the open-access article under the recorded cc by licence; © the authors. PMID 42673462 · DOI · PMC13552868
Key reviews and meta-analyses
The most cited review-type papers among PubMed’s best-match results for this heading, listed with bibliographic details only. Follow the links for the full text and access terms.
- Research article Meta-analysis reveals that hydraulic traits explain cross-species patterns of drought-induced tree mortality across the globe [4]
- Research article Complex plant responses to drought and heat stress under climate change [5]
- Research article Drought effect on plant nitrogen and phosphorus: a meta-analysis [6]
- Research article Psychological distress and psychiatric disorder after natural disasters: systematic review and meta-analysis [7]
- Research article Global analysis of plasticity in turgor loss point, a key drought tolerance trait [8]
- Research article Spatial and temporal variation in plant hydraulic traits and their relevance for climate change impacts on vegetation [9]
References
- Sasaki T, Hoss D, Huang Y, Iwachido Y, Zheng L, Abdala-Roberts L, et al.. Biodiversity effects under climate extremes intensify with aridity in grasslands but not forests. . 2026. PMID 42457981 · DOI · PMC13441892
- Tuninetti M, Davis KF. Addressing global hotspots of drought-related crop production losses. . 2026. PMID 42156736 · DOI · PMC13381596
- Wion AP, Stevens JT, Coop JD, Farris CA, Parks SA, Allen CD, et al.. Recent high-severity wildfires in a dry-conifer landscape are unprecedented over five centuries and foretell future forest loss. . 2026. PMID 42673462 · DOI · PMC13552868
- Anderegg WR, Klein T, Bartlett M, Sack L, Pellegrini AF, Choat B, et al.. Meta-analysis reveals that hydraulic traits explain cross-species patterns of drought-induced tree mortality across the globe. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016. PMID 27091965 · DOI · PMC4983847
- Sato H, Mizoi J, Shinozaki K, Yamaguchi-Shinozaki K. Complex plant responses to drought and heat stress under climate change. Plant J. 2024. PMID 38168757 · DOI
- He M, Dijkstra FA. Drought effect on plant nitrogen and phosphorus: a meta-analysis. New Phytol. 2014. PMID 25130263 · DOI
- Beaglehole B, Mulder RT, Frampton CM, Boden JM, Newton-Howes G, Bell CJ. Psychological distress and psychiatric disorder after natural disasters: systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Psychiatry. 2018. PMID 30301477 · DOI
- Bartlett MK, Zhang Y, Kreidler N, Sun S, Ardy R, Cao K, et al.. Global analysis of plasticity in turgor loss point, a key drought tolerance trait. Ecol Lett. 2014. PMID 25327976 · DOI
- Anderegg WR. Spatial and temporal variation in plant hydraulic traits and their relevance for climate change impacts on vegetation. New Phytol. 2015. PMID 25729797 · DOI
About this article
- Sources
- NLM Medical Subject Headings (definition, synonyms); NCBI PubMed (counts, identifiers); Europe PMC (open-access abstracts and citation counts).
- Verification
- Every reference was resolved against PubMed on 2026-11-04; title, year and DOI matched.
- Review state
- automated source verified; no human expert review has been recorded yet.
- Version
- 1, last updated 2026-11-04.
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Evidence strength
EvidenceHelix's computed view of the study designs behind this topic: how common meta-analyses, randomized trials and reviews are, how recent the literature is, and a plain-language reading. It describes the design mix of the literature. It is not a quality appraisal of any study, and it is not medical advice.