Water Flows and the Dynamics of Desert Vegetation Stripes

Cornet, Antoine; Montaña, Carlos; Delhoume, Jean-Pierre; López‐Portillo, Jorge

doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-2804-2_16

Cited by 56 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Due to the striped appearance on aerial photographs this phenomenon was called "brousse tigrée" by Clos-Arceduc (1956). Its occurrence is reported for the Sahel (White, 1970;Janke, 1976;Cornet et al, 1992;Thiéry et al, 1995;Hiernaux and Gérard, 1999) and other semiarid regions (Valentin et al, 1999).…”

Section: Contributions Of Other Authorsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Several authors described the main formation mechanism: due to a better water balance in the upper soil (generated by sheet run-off on the bare inter-bands), the self-modifying system of vegetation stripes offers more demanding species the possibility to survive in habitats with less rainfall (White, 1970;Cornet et al, 1992;. D'Herbès and and Valentin et al (1999) discussed the Niger tiger bush as a natural water-harvesting system.…”

Section: Contributions Of Other Authorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors defined this as bistability (see also Thiéry et al, 1995). Increased resource scarcity leads to a spatial reorganisation (see also Cornet et al, 1992, andValentin et al, 1999). According to the model, certain spatial structures may develop in real ecosystems that only arise when resource availability has decreased.…”

Section: Gilad Et Al 2007mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Desertification, resilience, and re-greening in the African Sahel – a matter of the observation period?

Kusserow

2017

Earth Syst. Dynam.

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Abstract. Since the turn of the millennium various scientific publications have been discussing a re-greening of the Sahel after the 1980s drought mainly based on coarse-resolution satellite data. However, the author's own field studies suggest that the situation is far more complex and that both paradigms, the "encroaching Sahara" and the "re-greening Sahel", need to be questioned. This paper discusses the concepts of desertification, resilience, and re-greening by addressing four main aspects: (i) the relevance of edaphic factors for a vegetation re-greening, (ii-iii) the importance of the selected observation period in the debate on Sahel greening or browning, and (iv) modifications in the vegetation pattern as possible indicators of ecosystem changes (shift from originally diffuse to contracted vegetation patterns).The data referred to in this paper cover a time period of more than 150 years and include the author's own research results from the early 1980s until today. A special emphasis, apart from fieldwork data and remote sensing data, is laid on the historical documents.The key findings summarised at the end show the following: (i) vegetation recovery predominantly depends on soil types; (ii) when discussing Sahel greening vs. Sahel browning, the majority of research papers only focus on post-drought conditions. Taking pre-drought conditions (before the 1980s) into account, however, is essential to fully understand the situation. Botanical investigations and remote-sensing-based time series clearly show a substantial decline in woody species diversity and cover density compared to pre-drought conditions; iii) the self-organised patchiness of vegetation is considered to be an important indicator of ecosystem changes.

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Section: Contributions Of Other Authorsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Contributions Of Other Authorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Desertification, resilience, and re-greening in the African Sahel – a matter of the observation period?

Kusserow

2017

Earth Syst. Dynam.

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“…In hot deserts, plant interspaces are covered by smooth crusts that generally reduce water infiltration. The resultant increase in runoff from crusted plant interspaces potentially provides increased water availability for nearby vascular plants (Tongway and Ludwig 1990;Cornet et al 1992;Zaady and Shachak 1994;Eldridge et al 2001;Chap. 22).…”

Section: Thermal and Water Relationsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Influence of Biological Soil Crusts on Soil Environments and Vascular Plants

Belnap¹,

Prasse²,

Harper³

2001

Ecological Studies

117

110

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“…Soil water content can differ between the canopies of woody plants and the inter-canopies that separate them Rambal, 1988, 1993;Belsky et al, 1989a,b;Dawson, 1993;Ryel et al, 1996;Breshears et al, 1997;Bhark and Small, Lebron et al, 2007 see also Loik et al, 2004), with canopy patches being either drier or wetter than intercanopy patches, and patch types differing perhaps most dramatically in those with banded vegetation patterns (e.g. Cornet et al, 1992). In addition, edges between canopy and intercanopy patches can be important transition zones that, in some cases, may have the most soil moisture due to canopy drip Madsen et al, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Horizontal heterogeneity in the frequency of plant‐available water with woodland intercanopy–canopy vegetation patch type rivals that occuring vertically by soil depth

2009

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Soil moisture integrates and drives ecohydrological processes in dryland ecosystems. However, despite the central importance of soil moisture, relevant field studies have not holistically assessed key inter-related aspects of ecohydrological spatiotemporal variation: the threshold-like manner in which soil texture controls the frequency at which soil water is readily available for plants, assessment of horizontal heterogeneity associated with vegetation patches in addition to vertical heterogeneity associated with depth, seasonal variation associated with precipitation type (snow vs rain) and inter-annual variation spanning notably wet and dry periods. We measured soil water content by neutron probe in a semiarid piñon-juniper woodland (Pinus edulis and Juniperus monosperma) in northern New Mexico, USA, over 15 years and evaluated an ecohydrological metric-plantavailable water, estimated as the percentage of time that soil water content was sufficiently wet to be generally available to plants. The frequency of plant-available water varied significantly across all variables assessed: precipitation amount (across years or seasons), precipitation type, vertically with soil depth and horizontally with vegetation patch type (canopy patches beneath trees, intercanopy patches between trees and edges between the two patch types). Notably, in many cases, horizontal heterogeneity in plant-available water associated with vegetation patch was as substantial as vertical heterogeneity associated with depth, yet such horizontal heterogeneity is not included in most ecological or hydrological models. Our results highlight spatiotemporal variation in the frequency of plant-available water that is substantial, often overlooked, and may need to be explicitly considered for predicting dryland vegetation responses to land use and climate change.

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Water Flows and the Dynamics of Desert Vegetation Stripes

Cited by 56 publications

References 12 publications

Desertification, resilience, and re-greening in the African Sahel – a matter of the observation period?

Desertification, resilience, and re-greening in the African Sahel – a matter of the observation period?

Influence of Biological Soil Crusts on Soil Environments and Vascular Plants

Horizontal heterogeneity in the frequency of plant‐available water with woodland intercanopy–canopy vegetation patch type rivals that occuring vertically by soil depth

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