title: Patterned vegetation and rainfall intermittency.
abstract: We study a mathematical model for the dynamics of patterned dryland vegetation in the presence of rainfall intermittency, adopting a spatially explicit approach. We find that most results found for constant precipitation carry over to the case of intermittent rainfall, with a few important novelties. For intermittent precipitation, the functional forms of the water uptake and consequently of the vegetation growth rate play an important role. Nonlinear, concave-up forms of water uptake as a function of soil moisture lead to a beneficial effect of rainfall intermittency, with a stronger effect when vegetation feedbacks are absent. The results obtained with the explicit-space model employed here are in keeping with those provided by simpler, implicit-space approaches, and provide a more complete view of vegetation dynamics in arid ecosystems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel.
authors.forename: A Y
authors.initials: AY
authors.lastname: Kletter
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: von Hardenberg
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Meron
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Provenzale
mesh_terms: D018533:Biomass; D003889:Desert Climate; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D063245:Plant Development; D011891:Rain; D012621:Seasons; D012987:Soil
chemical_list: D012987:Soil