How do vegetation bands form in dry lands? Insights from numerical modeling and field studies in southern Nevada, USA

Vegetation bands are periodic bands of vegetation, separated by interband spaces devoid of vegetation, oriented parallel to the topographic contour in some gently sloping arid to semiarid environments. Models of vegetation band formation attribute their formation to positive feedbacks among vegetation density, soil porosity/permeability, and infiltration rates. Here we present an alternative model based on field measurements at our study sites in southern Nevada. In this model, interband spaces between vegetation bands form because topographic mounds beneath vegetation bands detain water upslope from vegetation bands, leading to hydrologic and sedimentologic conditions that inhibit the survival of plants in interband spaces. We used terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) to create high-resolution (similar to 10 cm(2)/pixel) raster data sets of bare-earth topography and canopy height for four study sites. Analyses of the TLS data, in addition to measurements of soil shear strength and particle size, document the potential for detention in interband spaces and a near-inverse proportionality between band spacing and regional slope. We describe a cellular automaton model (herein called model 1) for vegetation band formation that includes just two user-defined parameters and that generates vegetation bands similar to those at our field sites, including the inverse proportionality between spacing and regional slope. A second model (model 2) accurately predicts the width of vegetation bands in terms of the number and spacing of plants and the geometry of individual plant mounds. We also present a GIS-based analysis that predicts where bands occur within a region based on topographic and hydroclimatic controls. Citation: Pelletier, J. D., S. B. DeLong, C. A. Orem, P. Becerra, K. Compton, K. Gressett, J. Lyons-Baral, L. A. McGuire, J. L. Molaro, and J. C. Spinler (2012), How do vegetation bands form in dry lands? Insights from numerical modeling and field studies in southern Nevada, USA, J. Geophys. Res., 117, F04026, doi:10.1029/2012JF002465.