Monitoring Land Degradation through Vegetation Dynamics Mathematical Modeling: Case of Jornada Basin (in the U.S.)

Abstract

Arid ecosystems are known to be sensitive to climate change. The Jornada Basin in the USA, as one representative of arid land, has suffered from land degradation in recent decades. In order to disentangle the climate–vegetation feedback, we analyzed the vegetation dynamics under the effects of climate change via a mathematical model based on the reaction–diffusion mechanism. Using this model, we conducted a sensitive analysis of climate factors and concluded that the ecosystem might experience a catastrophic shift with the climatic deterioration. We considered the non-local interaction term to explain the competition among plants. Additionally, the PLR (power law range) metric was used to quantify the extent of the degradation and to compare the results of the vegetation patterns from the remote sensing data and the simulations. From the results, this model could simulate the trends of land degradation in this area. We found that the land degradation could be mainly attributed to climate changes in recent years. This approach suggests that vegetation patterns can provide hints as to whether the ecosystem is approaching desertification. These results can help with mapping vulnerable arid areas around the world through model simulation and satellite images.