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Ecology

Scaling laws in the drier

Nature volume 449, pages 151–153 (2007)Cite this article

The vegetation of arid ecosystems displays scale-free, self-organized spatial patterns. Monitoring of such patterns could provide warning signals of the occurrence of sudden shifts towards desert conditions.

Once upon a time the Sahara was green — it was covered by vegetation. The evidence for this comes from many different sources, including the former existence of lakes. Around 5,500 years ago, the wet environmental conditions suddenly came to an end. Despite the absence of abrupt, external climatic change, plant productivity declined and the topsoil was lost. Eventually, the green Sahara became the desert Sahara that we know today1. The changes experienced by the biosphere over the past century, particularly increased desertification due to rising temperatures and declining rainfall, have raised concerns about the possibility of rapid shifts from green to desert states2,3. Arid and semi-arid ecosystems cover one-third of Earth's land surface, so there is a pressing need for quantitative ways to help forecast such shifts.

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Figure 1: Mutual benefits.

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Figure 2: Vegetation states in arid and semi-arid ecosystems.

References

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  1. Ricard Solé is in the ICREA-Complex Systems Laboratory, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Dr Aiguader 80, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. ricard.sole@upf.edu,

    Ricard Solé

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  1. Ricard Solé
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Solé, R. Scaling laws in the drier. Nature 449, 151–153 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/449151a

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