Title: Multi-level ecosystem response to drying climate trends
Abstract: Climate change and the development of drier climates threaten the health of ecosystems and the services they provide to humans. Understanding ecosystem response to drier climates may provide insights into improving their functioning and resilience. This response is likely to involve mechanisms operating at different levels of ecological organization. At the single-plant level, phenotypic changes can occur; at the population level, spatial patterns can form; and at the community level, community reassembly and biodiversity changes may take place. These mechanisms may affect one another, as stress relaxation by one mechanism weakens the driving forces of other mechanisms. In this talk I will discuss a few examples of multi-level responses to water stress, including stomatal closure and plant communication by cueing fronts, the emergence of highly resilient multiscale hexagonal patterns in grasslands, and buffering effects of spatial patterning on community composition along rainfall gradients. I will explain the mathematical modeling approach we use, present results of model studies in relation to empirical observations, and discuss possible implications of these results to ecosystem functioning and resilience under conditions of water stress.
Ehud Meron is a professor of physics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Meron's group studies nonlinear, spatially extended complex systems, focusing on dryland, savanna, and tundra vegetation. Their goal is to understand ecosystem response to climate change, taking into consideration the interplay between phenotypic changes in individual plants, spatial self-organization of plant populations, and reassembly of plant communities.
The NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology Seminar Series aims to bring together a mix of mathematicians and biologists to foster discussion and collaboration between the two fields. The seminar series will take place on Fridays from 10am - 11am at the NITMB in the John Hancock Center in downtown Chicago. There will be both an in-person and virtual component.
Tiffany Leighton
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