Journal
THEORETICAL ECOLOGY
Volume 4, Issue 2, Pages 113-132Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s12080-011-0115-3
Keywords
Advection-diffusion models; Ballistic models; Canopy turbulence; Large-eddy simulations; Long-distance dispersal; WALD dispersal kernel
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Funding
- Israel Science Foundation [ISF-474/02, ISF-150/07, ISF-FIRST-1316/05]
- US National Science Foundation [NSF-IBN-9981620, NSF-DEB-0453665]
- International Arid Land Consortium [IALC 03R/25]
- Ring Foundation
- Simon and Ethel Flegg Fellowship
- Humboldt Foundation
- NSF-EAR [0635787]
- Bi-National Agricultural Research Development fund [BARD IS-3861-06]
- Fulbright-Italy Distinguished Fellows Program
- USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station in Lansing MI [FS-NRS-06-Fire-10-01]
- USFS Northern Research Station in Delaware OH [09-CR-11242302-033]
- Midwestern Regional Center of NICCR [DE-FC02-06ER64158]
- US Department of Agriculture NIFA [2010-65112-20564]
- NSF [NSF-DEB-0911461, NSF-DEB-0918869]
- Academy of Finland
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific research (NWO)
- [NSF-ATM-0724088]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Earth Sciences [0635787] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0918869, 0911461] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- NIFA [581068, 2010-65112-20564] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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Over the past century, various mechanistic models have been developed to estimate the magnitude of seed dispersal by wind, and to elucidate the relative importance of physical and biological factors affecting this passive transport process. The conceptual development has progressed from ballistic models, through models incorporating vertically variable mean horizontal windspeed and turbulent excursions, to models accounting for discrepancies between airflow and seed motion. Over hourly timescales, accounting for turbulent fluctuations in the vertical velocity component generally leads to a power-law dispersal kernel that is censored by an exponential cutoff far from the seed source. The parameters of this kernel vary with the flow field inside the canopy and the seed terminal velocity. Over the timescale of a dispersal season, with mean wind statistics derived from an extreme-value distribution, these distribution-tail effects are compounded by turbulent diffusion to yield seed dispersal distances that are two to three orders of magnitude longer than the corresponding ballistic models. These findings from analytic models engendered explicit simulations of the effects of turbulence on seed dispersal using computationally intensive fluid dynamics tools. This development marks a bifurcation in the approaches to wind dispersal, seeking either finer resolution of the dispersal mechanism at the scale of a single dispersal event, or mechanistically derived analytical dispersal kernels needed to resolve long-term and large-scale processes such as meta-population dynamics and range expansion. Because seed dispersal by wind is molded by processes operating over multiple scales, new insights will require novel theoretical tactics that blend these two approaches while preserving the key interactions across scales.
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