Effects of precipitation intermittency on vegetation patterns in semi-arid landscapes

TL;DR

This study models how intermittent rainfall influences vegetation pattern formation in semi-arid landscapes, revealing that drought periods and water diffusion, rather than diffusion-driven instability, primarily drive pattern emergence.

Contribution

It introduces an impulsive reaction-advection-diffusion model to analyze rainfall intermittency effects on vegetation patterns, highlighting the role of droughts and water diffusion in pattern formation.

Findings

Intermittent rainfall delays pattern formation compared to continuous rainfall.

Long drought periods and water diffusion are key to pattern emergence.

Seed dispersal pulses have a weak effect on pattern onset.

Abstract

Patterns of vegetation are a characteristic feature of many semi-arid regions. The limiting resource in these ecosystems is water, which is added to the system through short and intense rainfall events that cause a pulse of biological processes such as plant growth and seed dispersal. We propose an impulsive model based on the Klausmeier reaction-advection-diffusion system, analytically investigate the effects of rainfall intermittency on the onset of patterns, and augment our results by numerical simulations of model extensions. Our investigation focuses on the parameter region in which a transition between uniform and patterned vegetation occurs. Results show that decay-type processes associated with a low frequency of precipitation pulses inhibit the onset of patterns and that under intermittent rainfall regimes, a spatially uniform solution is sustained at lower total precipitation volumes than under continuous rainfall, if plant species are unable to efficiently use low soil moisture levels. Unlike in the classical setting of a reaction-diffusion model, patterns are not caused by a diffusion-driven instability but by a combination of sufficiently long periods of droughts between precipitation pulses and water diffusion. Our results further indicate that the introduction of pulse-type seed dispersal weakens the effects of changes to width and shape of the plant dispersal kernel on the onset of patterns.