Before revision:  Using a simple model for vegetation dynamics, we show that environmental temporal variability --a well-recognized feature of semiarid environments-- promotes in a robust way (i.e. for a broad range of parameter values) the emergence of scale-free vegetation patches .
After revision:  Using a simple model for vegetation dynamics, we show that environmental temporal variability --a well-recognized feature of semiarid environments-- promotes in a robust way (i.e. for a broad range of parameter values) the emergence of vegetation patches with broadly distributed cluster sizes .