Regime shifts in bistable water-stressed ecosystems due to amplification of stochastic rainfall patterns

We develop a framework that casts the point water-vegetation dynamics under stochastic rainfall forcing as a continuous-time random walk (CTRW), which yields an evolution equation for the joint probability density function (PDF) of soil-moisture and biomass. We find regime shifts in the steady-state PDF as a consequence of changes in the rainfall structure, which flips the relative strengths of the system attractors, even for the same mean precipitation. Through an effective potential, we quantify the impact of rainfall variability on ecosystem resilience and conclude that amplified rainfall regimes reduce the resilience of water-stressed ecosystems, even if the mean annual precipitation remains constant. ©2015 American Physical Society.To access the data in this article contact the corresponding author. MD acknowledges the support of the European Research Council through the project MHetScale (617511). LCF gratefully acknowledges a ’Ramon y Cajal’ Fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RyC-2012-11704)Peer reviewe