Center Seminars & Workshops
Events
Punit Gandhi
(Virginia Commonwealth University)
The impact of rainfall variability on pattern formation in a flow-kick model for dryland vegetation bands
Show/Hide Abstract
Desert ecosystems have been characterized by Noy-Meir (1973) as
"water-controlled ecosystems with infrequent, discrete and largely
unpredictable water inputs," with the limiting resource of water
arriving in short-lived pulses. These dry climates are known to
support regular, large-scale patterns of vegetation growth organized
into evenly spaced bands that are separated by swaths of bare soil,
and studies suggest that this may provide improved resilience to
drought. I will present a modeling framework for vegetation pattern
formation in drylands that treats storms as instantaneous kicks to the
soil water, which then interacts with vegetation during the long dry
periods between the storms. The spatial profiles of the soil water
kicks capture positive feedbacks in the storm-level hydrology that act
to concentrate water within the vegetation bands. This flow-kick model
predicts that variance in rainfall introduced through randomness in
the timing and magnitude of water input from storms decreases the
parameter range over which patterns appear and may therefore
negatively impact ecosystem resilience.
04:00 PM -
DRL 2C8
Asher Leeks
(Yale University)
The Social Life of Viruses
04:00 PM -
DRL 2C8