Abstract
Society is facing growing environmental problems that require new research efforts to understand the way ecosystems operate and survive, and their mutual relationships with the hydrologic cycle. In this respect, ecohydrology suggests a renewed interdisciplinary approach that aims to provide a better comprehension of the effects of climatic changes on terrestrial ecosystems. With this aim, a coupled hydrological/ecological model is adopted to describe simultaneously vegetation pattern evolution and hydrological water budget at the basin scale using as test site the Upper Rio Salado basin (Sevilleta, NM, USA). The hydrological analyses have been carried out using a recently formulated framework for the water balance at the daily level linked with a spatial model for the description of the spatial organization of vegetation. This enables quantitatively assessing the effects on soil water availability on future climatic scenarios. Results highlighted that the relationship between climatic forcing (water availability) and vegetation patterns is strongly non-linear. This implies, under some specific conditions which depend on the ecosystem characteristics, small changes in climatic conditions may produce significant transformation of the vegetation patterns.
Highlights
We explored the impact of climate change on the vegetation patterns of semiarid ecosystems
The modeling approach proposed relies on the physically based approach, where a steady state solution of soil moisture is used to drive a cellular automata model applied on a real case study
Analyses show that the spatial distribution of vegetation is mainly controlled by local climate and basin morphology that play a dual role, influencing the soil water balance at the local scale and the interaction between species
Summary
Patterns of vegetation on the landscape are mainly a function of the availability of light [1,2], nutrients [3,4,5], and soil moisture [6,7] that support plant growth, and other environmental conditions, such as temperature and snow, that determine the timing and length of the growing season [8,9]. This type of analysis showed a negative effect of the decline in rainfall of Mediterranean forests, a positive effect due to the increase in temperature of mountain forests [29] and an anticipation of the growing season and delayed senescence (grass and bushes of the Alps and Central Europe) [30,31] In this context, there is a clear need to develop conceptual models that are capable of interpreting and predicting spatial pattern formation especially in dryland (and similar ecosystems) that are the most vulnerable environments to eventual climatic change (e.g., [32,33,34]). We generated a number of synthetic vegetation patterns over a well-known basin located in central New Mexico, NM, USA
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