کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
4497780 1318950 2009 16 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Deeply gapped vegetation patterns: On crown/root allometry, criticality and desertification
موضوعات مرتبط
علوم زیستی و بیوفناوری علوم کشاورزی و بیولوژیک علوم کشاورزی و بیولوژیک (عمومی)
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
Deeply gapped vegetation patterns: On crown/root allometry, criticality and desertification
چکیده انگلیسی

The dynamics of vegetation is formulated in terms of the allometric and structural properties of plants. Within the framework of a general and yet parsimonious approach, we focus on the relationship between the morphology of individual plants and the spatial organization of vegetation populations. So far, in theoretical as well as in field studies, this relationship has received only scant attention. The results reported remedy to this shortcoming. They highlight the importance of the crown/root ratio and demonstrate that the allometric relationship between this ratio and plant development plays an essential part in all matters regarding ecosystems stability under conditions of limited soil (water) resources. This allometry determines the coordinates in parameter space of a critical point that controls the conditions in which the emergence of self-organized biomass distributions is possible. We have quantified this relationship in terms of parameters that are accessible by measurement of individual plant characteristics. It is further demonstrated that, close to criticality, the dynamics of plant populations is given by a variational Swift–Hohenberg equation. The evolution of vegetation in response to increasing aridity, the conditions of gapped pattern formation and the conditions under which desertification takes place are investigated more specifically. It is shown that desertification may occur either as a local desertification process that does not affect pattern morphology in the course of its unfolding or as a gap coarsening process after the emergence of a transitory, deeply gapped pattern regime. Our results amend the commonly held interpretation associating vegetation patterns with a Turing instability. They provide a more unified understanding of vegetation self-organization within the broad context of matter order–disorder transitions.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Journal of Theoretical Biology - Volume 261, Issue 2, 21 November 2009, Pages 194–209
نویسندگان
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