Patterned vegetation and rainfall intermittency

We study a mathematical model for the dynamics of patterned dryland vegetation in the presence of rainfall intermittency, adopting a spatially explicit approach. We find that most results found for constant precipitation carry over to the case of intermittent rainfall, with a few important novelties...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of theoretical biology Vol. 256; no. 4; pp. 574 - 583
Main Authors Kletter, A.Y., von Hardenberg, J., Meron, E., Provenzale, A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Elsevier Ltd 21.02.2009
Elsevier
Subjects
Biomass
Desert Climate
Drylands
Ecosystem
Ecosystem modeling
Models, Biological
Plant Development
Rain
Rainfall
Seasons
Soil
Spatial–temporal patterns
Vegetation dynamics
Ecosystem modeling
Rainfall
Vegetation dynamics
Drylands
Spatial–temporal patterns
Life Sciences
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Summary:We study a mathematical model for the dynamics of patterned dryland vegetation in the presence of rainfall intermittency, adopting a spatially explicit approach. We find that most results found for constant precipitation carry over to the case of intermittent rainfall, with a few important novelties. For intermittent precipitation, the functional forms of the water uptake and consequently of the vegetation growth rate play an important role. Nonlinear, concave-up forms of water uptake as a function of soil moisture lead to a beneficial effect of rainfall intermittency, with a stronger effect when vegetation feedbacks are absent. The results obtained with the explicit-space model employed here are in keeping with those provided by simpler, implicit-space approaches, and provide a more complete view of vegetation dynamics in arid ecosystems.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0022-5193
1095-8541
DOI:10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.10.020