Aperiodic Clustered and Periodic Hexagonal Vegetation Spot Arrays Explained by Inhomogeneous Environments and Climate Trends in Arid Ecosystems
Pinto-Ramos, David ， Clerc, Marcel Gabriel ， Makhoute, Abdelkader ， Tlidi, Mustapha
2025-11-01 GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 2025 52(卷), 21(期), (null页)
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Due to climate change, overgrazing, and deforestation, arid ecosystems are vulnerable to desertification and land degradation. As aridity increases, vegetation cover loses spatial homogeneity and self-organizes into heterogeneous vegetation patterns, a step before a catastrophic shift to bare soil. Several studies suggest that environmental inhomogeneities in time or space are crucial to understand these phenomena. Using a unified mathematical model and incorporating environmental inhomogeneities in space, we show how two branches of vegetation patterns create a hysteresis loop as the mortality level changes. In an increasing mortality scenario, one observes an equilibrium branch of high vegetation biomass that forms self-organized hexagonal-like patterns. However, when the mortality trend is reversed, one observes a branch with low biomass and no periodicity, where vegetation spots form disordered clusters instead of a hexagonal lattice. This behavior is supported by remote sensing and field observations and can be linked to climate change in arid ecosystems.
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