ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2012
Hydrologic variability in dryland regions: impacts on ecosystem dynamics and food security.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A systematic review of ecological attributes that confer resilience to climate change in environmental restoration.PloS one · 2017Pooled it
- A lagrangian particle tracking approach of evapotranspiration partitioning to explore evaporation and transpiration travel time distributions in the root zone.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The optimized Maxent model reveals the pattern of distribution and changes in the suitable cultivation areas forEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- Clinal variations in seedling traits and responses to water availability correspond to seed-source environmental gradients in a foundational dryland tree species.Annals of botany · 2023Article
- Small-scale farming in drylands: New models for resilient practices of millet and sorghum cultivation.PloS one · 2023Article
- Drivers of population differentiation in phenotypic plasticity in a temperate conifer: A 27-year study.Evolutionary applications · 2022Article
- Grassland type and seasonal effects have a bigger influence on plant functional and taxonomical diversity than prairie dog disturbances in semiarid grasslands.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Microbial communities display alternative stable states in a fluctuating environment.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- CAM plant expansion favored indirectly by asymmetric climate warming and increased rainfall variability.Oecologia · 2020Article
- Rainfall trend and variability in Southeast Florida: Implications for freshwater availability in the Everglades.PloS one · 2019Article
- Simulated climate change affects how biocrusts modulate water gains and desiccation dynamics after rainfall events.Ecohydrology : ecosystems, land and water process interactions, ecohydrogeomorphology · 2018Article
- Climatic factors shaping intraspecific leaf trait variation of a neotropical tree along a rainfall gradient.PloS one · 2018Article
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- Population differentiation in a Mediterranean relict shrub: the potential role of local adaptation for coping with climate change.Oecologia · 2016Article
- Navigating challenges and opportunities of land degradation and sustainable livelihood development in dryland social-ecological systems: a case study from Mexico.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Article
- Legacies of precipitation fluctuations on primary production: theory and data synthesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Review
- Climate change effects on above- and below-ground interactions in a dryland ecosystem.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Article
- Lessons from community-based payment for ecosystem service schemes: from forests to rangelands.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Article
- It is getting hotter in here: determining and projecting the impacts of global environmental change on drylands.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research on ecosystem and societal response to global environmental change typically considers the effects of shifts in mean climate conditions. There is, however, some evidence of ongoing changes also in the variance of hydrologic and climate fluctuations. A relatively high interannual variability is a distinctive feature of the hydrologic regime of dryland regions, particularly at the desert margins. Hydrologic variability has an important impact on ecosystem dynamics, food security and societal reliance on ecosystem services in water-limited environments. Here, we investigate some of the current patterns of hydrologic variability in drylands around the world and review the major effects of hydrologic fluctuations on ecosystem resilience, maintenance of biodiversity and food security. We show that random hydrologic fluctuations may enhance the resilience of dryland ecosystems by obliterating bistable deterministic behaviours and threshold-like responses to external drivers. Moreover, by increasing biodiversity and the associated ecosystem redundancy, hydrologic variability can indirectly enhance post-disturbance recovery, i.e. ecosystem resilience.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.