Spatial synchrony in vegetation response

Abstract

Spatial synchrony is ubiquitous in nature, and its decrease with the distance is an important feature that affects the viability of spatially structured populations. Here we present an empirical study of spatial synchrony in terrestrial vegetation using large scale remote sensing data. The decrease of synchrony with distance, as expressed by the correlation in rate of abundance change at a given time lag, is characterized using a power-law function with stretched-exponential cutoff. The range of these correlations appears to decrease when precipitation increases and to increase over time. The relevance of these results to the viability of populations is discussed.