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For water-limited arid ecosystems, where water distribution and infiltration play a vital role, various models have been set up to explain vegetation patterning. On sloped terrains, vegetation aligned in bands has been observed ubiquitously. In this paper, we consider the appearance, stability, and bifurcations of 2D striped or banded patterns in an arid ecosystem model. We numerically show that the resilience of the vegetation bands is larger on steeper slopes by computing the stability regions (Busse balloons) of striped patterns with respect to 1D and transverse 2D perturbations. This is corroborated by numerical simulations with a slowly decreasing water input parameter. Here, long wavelength striped patterns are unstable against transverse perturbations, which we also rigorously prove on flat ground through an Evans function approach. In addition, we prove a "Squire theorem" for a class of two-component reaction-advection-diffusion systems that includes our model, showing that the onset of pattern formation in 2D is due to 1D instabilities in the direction of advection, which naturally leads to striped patterns. V C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. This paper has been motivated by studies in one space dimension of a scaled phenomenological model for vegetation on possibly sloped planes in arid ecosystems. 53,60 One-dimensional patterns ideally represent striped patterns in two space dimensions by trivially extending them into a transversal direction. Such patterns are referred to as banded vegetation and have received considerable attention after reports of widespread observations. 8,58 Understanding the appearance and disappearance of vegetation bands may ultimately help prevent land degradation. The restriction to one space dimension may overestimate stability: patterns that are stable against 1D perturbations are not necessarily stable against all 2D perturbations. Natural questions to pose are:• Which of the 1D stable patterns extend to 2D stable striped patterns? • In case of destabilization by 2D perturbations, which mechanisms are responsible?In this paper, we answer these questions for the arid ecosystem model and determine the impact of slope induced advection of water. The influence of advection on striped pattern formation is studied in a more general setting. This approach provides a clear argumentation that is unobscured by model-specific details. Equally important, the results will be applicable to a wide range of models. Applicability to the arid ecosystem model is carefully checked though, assuring that the abstract requirements can in fact be met in practice.

Spatial self-organization of dryland vegetation constitutes one of the most promising indicators for an ecosystem’s proximity to desertification. This insight is based on studies of reaction–diffusion models that reproduce visual characteristics of vegetation patterns observed on aerial photographs. However, until now, the development of reliable early warning systems has been hampered by the lack of more in-depth comparisons between model predictions and real ecosystem patterns. In this paper, we combined topographical data, (remotely sensed) optical data, and in situ biomass measurements from two sites in Somalia to generate a multilevel description of dryland vegetation patterns. We performed an in-depth comparison between these observed vegetation pattern characteristics and predictions made by the extended-Klausmeier model for dryland vegetation patterning. Consistent with model predictions, we found that for a given topography, there is multistability of ecosystem states with different pattern wavenumbers. Furthermore, observations corroborated model predictions regarding the relationships between pattern wavenumber, total biomass, and maximum biomass. In contrast, model predictions regarding the role of slope angles were not corroborated by the empirical data, suggesting that inclusion of small-scale topographical heterogeneity is a promising avenue for future model development. Our findings suggest that patterned dryland ecosystems may be more resilient to environmental change than previously anticipated, but this enhanced resilience crucially depends on the adaptive capacity of vegetation patterns.

Theory suggests that gradual environmental change may erode the resilience of ecosystems and increase their susceptibility to critical transitions. This notion has received a lot of attention in ecology in recent decades. An important question receiving far less attention is whether ecosystems can cope with the rapid environmental changes currently imposed. The importance of this question was recently highlighted by model studies showing that elevated rates of change may trigger critical transitions, whereas slow environmental change would not. This paper aims to provide a mechanistic understanding of these rate-induced critical transitions to facilitate identification of rate sensitive ecosystems. Analysis of rate sensitive ecological models is challenging, but we demonstrate how rate-induced transitions in an elementary model can still be understood. Our analyses reveal that rate-induced transitions 1) occur if the rate of environmental change is high compared to the response rate of ecosystems, 2) are driven by rates, rather than magnitudes, of change and 3) occur once a critical rate of change is exceeded. Disentangling rate-induced transitions from classical transitions in observations would be challenging. However, common features of rate-sensitive models suggest that ecosystems with coupled fast-slow dynamics, exhibiting repetitive catastrophic shifts or displaying periodic spatial patterns are more likely to be rate sensitive. Our findings are supported by experimental studies showing rate-dependent outcomes. Rate sensitivity of models suggests that the common definition of ecological resilience is not suitable for a subset of real ecosystems and that formulating limits to magnitudes of change may not always safeguard against ecosystem degradation.

Abstract. This paper is concerned with quasi-linear parabolic reaction-diffusion-advection systems on extended domains. Frameworks for well-posedness in Hilbert spaces and spaces of continuous functions are presented, based on known results using maximal regularity. It is shown that spectra of travelling waves on the line are meaningfully given by familiar tools for semilinear equations, such as dispersion relations, and basic connections of spectra to stability and instability are considered. In particular, a principle of linearized orbital instability for manifolds of equilibria is proven. Our goal is to provide easy access for practitioners to these rigorous methods. As a guiding example the GrayScott-Klausmeier model for vegetation-water interaction is considered in detail.