Numerical Bifurcation Analysis of Turing and Symmetry Broken Patterns of a Vegetation PDE Model

Abstract

We study the mechanisms of pattern formation for vegetation dynamics in water-limited regions. Our analysis is based on a set of two partial differential equations (PDEs) of reaction-diffusion type for the biomass and water and one ordinary differential equation (ODE) describing the dependence of the toxicity on the biomass. We perform a linear stability analysis in the one-dimensional finite space, we derive analytically the conditions for the appearance of Turing instability that gives rise to spatio-temporal patterns emanating from the homogeneous solution, and provide its dependence with respect to the size of the domain. Furthermore, we perform a numerical bifurcation analysis in order to study the pattern formation of the inhomogeneous solution, with respect to the precipitation rate, thus analyzing the stability and symmetry properties of the emanating patterns. Based on the numerical bifurcation analysis, we have found new patterns, which form due to the onset of secondary bifurcations from the primary Turing instability, thus giving rise to a multistability of asymmetric solutions.