HR: 09:00h
AN: B31E-05 INVITED [Abstracts]
TI: Stochastic Models of Pulse-Reserve Dynamics in Water-Limited Ecosystems
AU: Porporato, A
EM: amilcare@duke.edu
AF: Duke University, Civil and Environmental Engineering
P.O. Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708
United States
AU: * Rigby, J
EM: jrrigby@duke.edu
AF: Duke University, Civil and Environmental Engineering
P.O. Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708
United States
AU: Daly, E
EM: edaly@duke.edu
AF: Duke University, Civil and Environmental Engineering
P.O. Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708
United States
AU: Rodriguez-Iturbe, I
EM: irodrigu@princeton.edu
AF: Princeton University, Civil and Environmental Engineering
E-209A Engineering Quad, Princeton, NJ 08544
United States
AB:
Recent reviews of the pulse-reserve paradigm in aridland ecology question the applicability of research focusing on
static relationships between soil moisture state and ecosystem response, particularly when this research is proposed as
a basis for understanding the likely effects of climate change. Existing dynamical models, on the other hand, tend to
be complex and often only amenable to numerical solution, therefore failing to yield explicit relationships between
climate parameters and associated ecological responses. Following detailed models of the soil-plant system, a set of
minimalistic models of soil moisture-biomass coupling for water-limited ecosystems are proposed as possible dynamical
representations of the pulse-reserve conceptual model. The models reduce the detailed models to more analytically
tractable forms while retaining the qualitative dynamics of the interactions at the daily time scale over the course of
a single growing season. Responses of biomass statistics (mean and variance) to changing climate parameters (rainfall
frequency and depth) are derived for some special cases showing explicitly the linkage between rainfall variability and
biomass response.
DE: 0414 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0793, 1615, 4805, 4912)
DE: 0439 Ecosystems, structure and dynamics (4815)
DE: 1813 Eco-hydrology
DE: 1866 Soil moisture
DE: 1869 Stochastic hydrology
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005