Integrating theory and experiments to link local mechanisms and ecosystem-level consequences of vegetation patterns in drylands

Self-organized spatial patterns of vegetation are frequent in water-limited regions and have been suggested as important indicators of ecosystem health. However, the mechanisms underlying their emergence remain unclear. Some theories hypothesize that patterns could result from a scale-dependent feedback (SDF), whereby interactions favoring plant growth dominate at short distances and growth-inhibitory interactions dominate in the long range. However, we know little about how net plant-to-plant interactions may change sign with inter-individual distance, and in the absence of strong empirical support, the relevance of this SDF for vegetation pattern formation remains disputed. These theories predict a sequential change in pattern shape from gapped to labyrinthine to spotted spatial patterns as precipitation declines. Nonetheless, alternative theories show that the same sequence of patterns could emerge even if net interactions between plants were always inhibitory (purely competitive feedbacks, PCF). Although these alternative hypotheses lead to visually indistinguishable patterns they predict very different desertification dynamics following the spotted pattern. Moreover, vegetation interaction with other ecosystem components can introduce additional spatio-temporal scales that reshape both the patterns and the desertification dynamics. Therefore, to make reliable ecological predictions for a focal ecosystem, it is crucial that models accurately capture the mechanisms at play in the system of interest. Here, we review existing theories for vegetation self-organization and their conflicting predictions about desertification dynamics. We further discuss possible ways for reconciling these predictions and potential empirical tests via manipulative experiments to improve our understanding of how vegetation self-organizes and better predict the fate of the ecosystems where they form.