A physics foray into ecology: modeling vegetation dynamics in water-limited ecosystems
Channel: Biblioteca Pós-graduação em Física UFMG
Date: 2021-06-21

Título: A physics foray into ecology: modeling vegetation dynamics in water-limited ecosystems

Palestrante: Ricardo Martinez-Garcia (ICTP-SAIFR & IFT – UNESP)

Resumo:

Water-limited ecosystems are incredibly complex systems covering 40% of Earth's land surface, mostly in developing countries, and are home to 35% of the world population. A paradigmatic property of these ecosystems is the spatial self-organization of vegetation, which leads to strikingly regular spatial distributions of plants. These self-organized spatial patterns have been suggested as important ecosystem health indicators. Specifically, pattern shapes may indicate the proximity of the ecosystem to undergo a desertification transition. Despite this potential ecological importance, the plant interactions that underlie pattern formation remain unclear. Without strong empirical evidence of how these patterns emerge, mathematical modeling has been crucial in formulating different hypotheses. However, models assuming different mechanistic origins reproduce the same series of patterns but predict contradicting ecological consequences for them. In this context, a new approach to understanding vegetation dynamics in water-limited ecosystems that focus on unveiling how plants interact with each other and how those interactions scale to large population sizes to create emergent patterns is needed.

In this presentation, I will first give an overview of existing models for vegetation pattern formation and their connection to well-known physical systems. Then, I will present our efforts to study vegetation dynamics in water-limited ecosystems, using a combination of models and greenhouse experiments.