Speaker
Description
Spatial self-organisation arises in many contexts. A classical example is Rayleigh-Bénard convection: when the temperature between a heated bottom plate and a cooler top plate grows beyond a certain threshold, convection cells form. Busse balloons are a (graphical) representation of these patterns. A prominent example in ecology is dryland vegetation. If yearly precipitation falls below some critical value, vegetation patterns emerge with a wavelength of tens of meters. These patterns have paradoxically been interpreted as both 1) early-warning signals of complete desertification and 2) a way of the ecosystem to adapt to drought. In this talk, we will include grazing in a Klausmeier-type reaction-diffusion model and see how the shape of the corresponding Busse balloon changes. The shape of the Busse balloon is then used to infer ecosystem response to increased drought.
