Regime shifts in models of dryland vegetation

Drylands are pattern-forming systems showing self-organized vegetation patchiness, multiplicity of stable states and fronts separating domains of alternative stable states. Pattern dynamics, induced by droughts or disturbances, can result in desertification shifts from patterned vegetation to bare s...

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Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences physical, and engineering sciences, 2013-12, Vol.371 (2004), p.1-14
Main Authors: Zelnik, Yuval R., Kinast, Shai, Yizhaq, Hezi, Bel, Golan, Meron, Ehud
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomass production
Conservation of Natural Resources
Desertification
Ecosystem
Ecosystem models
Fronts
Homoclinic Snaking
Hybridity
Localized Patterns
Modeling
Models Of Vegetation Pattern Formation
Models, Biological
Models, Theoretical
Multiplicity Of Stable States
Parametric models
Plants
Rain
Soil
Soil infiltration
Soil water
Surface water
Vegetation
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Summary:Drylands are pattern-forming systems showing self-organized vegetation patchiness, multiplicity of stable states and fronts separating domains of alternative stable states. Pattern dynamics, induced by droughts or disturbances, can result in desertification shifts from patterned vegetation to bare soil. Pattern formation theory suggests various scenarios for such dynamics: an abrupt global shift involving a fast collapse to bare soil, a gradual global shift involving the expansion and coalescence of bare-soil domains and an incipient shift to a hybrid state consisting of stationary bare-soil domains in an otherwise periodic pattern. Using models of dryland vegetation, we address the question of which of these scenarios can be realized. We found that the models can be split into two groups: models that exhibit multiplicity of periodic-pattern and bare-soil states, and models that exhibit, in addition, multiplicity of hybrid states. Furthermore, in all models, we could not identify parameter regimes in which bare-soil domains expand into vegetated domains. The significance of these findings is that, while models belonging to the first group can only exhibit abrupt shifts, models belonging to the second group can also exhibit gradual and incipient shifts. A discussion of open problems concludes the paper.
ISSN:1364-503X
1471-2962
DOI:10.1098/rsta.2012.0358