Front Instabilities Can Reverse Desertification.

Degradation processes in living systems often take place gradually by front propagation. An important context of such processes is loss of biological productivity in drylands or desertification. Using a dryland-vegetation model, we analyze the stability and dynamics of desertification fronts, identify linear and nonlinear front instabilities, and highlight the significance of these instabilities in inducing self-recovery. The results are based on the derivation and analysis of a universal amplitude equation for pattern-forming living systems for which nonuniform instabilities cannot emerge from the nonviable (zero) state. The results may therefore be applicable to other contexts of animate matter where degradation processes occur by front propagation.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Physical Review Letters

• Publication date

  2019-01-30

• Fields of study

  Biology, Geology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.048101PMID 30768298
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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