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Towards a theory of ecotone resilience: Coastal vegetation on a salinity gradient

Overview of attention for article published in Theoretical Population Biology, March 2012
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (82nd percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (83rd percentile)

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1 blog
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Title
Towards a theory of ecotone resilience: Coastal vegetation on a salinity gradient
Published in
Theoretical Population Biology, March 2012
DOI 10.1016/j.tpb.2012.02.007
Pubmed ID
Authors

Jiang Jiang, Daozhou Gao, Donald L. DeAngelis

Abstract

Ecotones represent locations where vegetation change is likely to occur as a result of climate and other environmental changes. Using a model of an ecotone vulnerable to such future changes, we estimated the resilience of the ecotone to disturbances. The specific ecotone is that between two different vegetation types, salinity-tolerant and salinity-intolerant, along a gradient in groundwater salinity. In the case studied, each vegetation type, through soil feedback loops, promoted local soil salinity levels that favor itself in competition with the other type. Bifurcation analysis was used to study the system of equations for the two vegetation types and soil salinity. Alternative stable equilibria, one for salinity-tolerant and one for salinity intolerant vegetation, were shown to exist over a region of the groundwater salinity gradient, bounded by two bifurcation points. This region was shown to depend sensitively on parameters such as the rate of upward infiltration of salinity from groundwater into the soil due to evaporation. We showed also that increasing diffusion rates of vegetation can lead to shrinkage of the range between the two bifurcation points. Sharp ecotones are typical of salt-tolerant vegetation (mangroves) near the coastline and salt-intolerant vegetation inland, even though the underlying elevation and groundwater salinity change very gradually. A disturbance such as an input of salinity to the soil from a storm surge could upset this stable boundary, leading to a regime shift of salinity-tolerant vegetation inland. We showed, however, that, for our model as least, a simple pulse disturbance would not be sufficient; the salinity would have to be held at a high level, as a 'press', for some time. The approach used here should be generalizable to study the resilience of a variety of ecotones to disturbances.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 89 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 2 2%
Spain 1 1%
Germany 1 1%
Unknown 85 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 23 26%
Researcher 11 12%
Student > Master 9 10%
Student > Doctoral Student 9 10%
Professor 8 9%
Other 18 20%
Unknown 11 12%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Environmental Science 32 36%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 21 24%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 7 8%
Engineering 3 3%
Physics and Astronomy 2 2%
Other 10 11%
Unknown 14 16%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 January 2013.
All research outputs
#4,659,519
of 25,374,647 outputs
Outputs from Theoretical Population Biology
#87
of 665 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#28,924
of 169,061 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Theoretical Population Biology
#1
of 6 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,647 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 81st percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 665 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.7. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 169,061 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 6 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them