State changes arising from wind transport in drylands (Invited)
Abstract
The importance of soil transport due to wind has been increasingly understood as a crucial aspect of ecosystem evolution in drylands. Aeolian processes impact vegetation structure, topographic characteristics, and soil properties, and aeolian transport drives important feedbacks that give rise to multiple stable states. Here, we outline the results of several field and modeling experiments that show the critical interactions that occur amongst wind, vegetation, and soils. Measurements of transport, fallout radionuclide tracing, deposition, and vegetation growth shows clearly that aeolian transport can result in significant alteration of a variety of ecosystem and soil factors. Moreover, changes to vegetation and soils from land use, invasive species, and climate change impact aeolian transport. Both simplistic and sophisticated modeling approaches indicate that transport can produce multiple stable states in dryland ecosystems, and thus can participate in large-scale reorganization of soils and vegetation. These results also indicate that manipulation of aeolian transport might provide the opportunity to step some drylands back from critical thresholds and begin the process of recovery from unwanted ecosystem states.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMEP11A..03O
- Keywords:
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- 1625 GLOBAL CHANGE Geomorphology and weathering;
- 0439 BIOGEOSCIENCES Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- 1632 GLOBAL CHANGE Land cover change;
- 0486 BIOGEOSCIENCES Soils/pedology