Abstract
Self-organisation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in ecosystems. These systems can experience transitions from a uniform cover towards the formation of vegetation patterns as a result of symmetry-breaking instability. They can be either periodic or localised in space. Localised vegetation patterns consist of more or less circular spots or patches that can be either isolated or randomly distributed in space. We report on a striking patterning phenomenon consisting of localised vegetation labyrinths. This intriguing pattern is visible in satellite photographs taken in many territories of Africa and Australia. They consist of labyrinths which is spatially irregular pattern surrounded by either a homogeneous cover or a bare soil. The phenomenon is not specific to particular plants or soils. They are observed on strictly homogenous environmental conditions on flat landscapes, but they are also visible on hills. The spatial size of localized labyrinth ranges typically from a few hundred meters to ten kilometres. A simple modelling approach based on the interplay between short-range and long-range interactions governing plant communities or on the water dynamics explains the observations reported here.
Highlights
Self-organisation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in ecosystems
The stabilization of localised labyrinth is attributed to the interface pinning p henomenon[42,43]. This phenomenon is characterized by an interface that connects a homogeneous state and a periodic one, which is motionless on a finite region of parameters, pinning range. This pinning effect occurs due to the competition between a global energy symmetry breaking between states that favors the interface propagate in one direction and the spatial modulations that block the interface by introducing potential barriers[42]
In this paper we have reported for the first time evidence of localised labyrinthine vegetation patterns observed on satellite images from Africa and Australia
Summary
Self-organisation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in ecosystems. These systems can experience transitions from a uniform cover towards the formation of vegetation patterns as a result of symmetry-breaking instability. Vegetation patterns are not always periodic and extended in space They can be spatially localised and aperiodic consisting of isolated or randomly distributed patches on bare soil[11,12,13] or gaps embedded in a uniform vegetation cover[14,15]. They are generated in a regime where the homogeneous cover coexists with periodic vegetation patterns. We unveil a new type of vegetation pattern consisting of a localised labyrinth embedded either in a homogeneous cover or surrounded by bare soil This phenomenon is observed in Africa and Australia by remote sensing imagery. The mechanism leading to their formation is attributed to the pinning-depinning transition that takes place in a parameter space where models exhibit bistability between extended disordered pattern and homogeneous cover
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