Vegetation—soil water interaction within a dynamical ecosystem model of grassland in semi-arid areas

Vegetation–soil water interaction within a dynamical ecosystem model of grassland in semi-arid areas

A dynamical ecosystem model with three variables, living biomass, wilted biomass and available soil wetness, is developed to examine the vegetation–soil water interaction in semi-arid areas. The governing equations are based on the mass conservation law. The physical and biophysical processes are formulated with the parameters estimated from observational data. Both numerical results and qualit...

Remotely Monitoring Ecosystem Water Use Efficiency of Grassland and Cropland in China's Arid and Semi-Arid Regions with MODIS Data

Scarce water resources are available in the arid and semi-arid areas of Northwest China, where significant water-related challenges will be faced in the coming decades. Quantitative evaluations of the spatio-temporal dynamics in ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE), as well as the underlying environmental controls, are crucial for predicting future climate change impacts on ecosystem carbon-wat...

Demographic noise and resilience in a semi-arid ecosystem model

The scarcity of water characterising drylands forces vegetation to adopt appropriate survival strategies. Some of these generate water-vegetation feedback mechanisms that can lead to spatial self-organisation of vegetation, as it has been shown with models representing plants by a density of biomass, varying continuously in time and space. However, although plants are usually quite plastic they...

Impacts of grazing intensity on denitrification and N2O production in a semi-arid grassland ecosystem

N2O production from denitrification in soils contributes to the enhanced greenhouse effect and the destruction of the stratospheric ozone. Ungulate grazing affects denitrification and the production of N2O. The short-term effect of grazing on denitrification and N2O production has been examined in several grassland ecosystems. However, the effects of long-term grazing have rarely been studied. ...

Soils of Arid and Semi-arid Areas