Disordered hyperuniformity signals functioning and resilience of self-organized vegetation patterns

作者：Wensi Hu, Quan‐Xing Liu, Bo Wang, Nuo Xu, Lijuan Cui, Chi Xu · 发表于：arXiv (Cornell University) · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.48550/arxiv.2311.07624 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Ecosystem dynamics and resilience、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant and animal studies

In harsh environments, organisms may self-organize into spatially patterned systems in various ways. So far, studies of ecosystem spatial self-organization have primarily focused on apparent orders reflected by regular patterns. However, self-organized ecosystems may also have cryptic orders that can be unveiled only through certain quantitative analyses. Here we show that disordered hyperuniformity as a striking class of hidden orders can exist in spatially self-organized vegetation landscapes. By analyzing the high-resolution remotely sensed images across the American drylands, we demonstrate that it is not uncommon to find disordered hyperuniform vegetation states characterized by suppressed density fluctuations at long range. Such long-range hyperuniformity has been documented in a wide range of microscopic systems. Our finding contributes to expanding this domain to accommodate natural landscape ecological systems. We use theoretical modeling to propose that disordered hyperuniform vegetation patterning can arise from three generalized mechanisms prevalent in dryland ecosystems, including (1) critical absorbing states driven by an ecological legacy effect, (2) scale-dependent feedbacks driven by plant-plant facilitation and competition, and (3) density-dependent aggregation driven by plant-sediment feedbacks. Our modeling results also show that disordered hyperuniform patterns can help ecosystems cope with arid conditions with enhanced functioning of soil moisture acquis...