ABSTRACT
Scientific research is generally conducted within well established disciplines of “normal science” [162] with few cross-disciplinary interactions. Periods of time in which two disparate scientific disciplines begin to interface with one another are rather the exception. Such is the case with spatial ecology and pattern formation, a research field that centers on the nonlinear dynamics of spatially extended systems and the self-appearance of spatial patterns. Field observations in arid and semi-arid regions during the past decade [317, 309, 63, 101] have revealed nearly periodic vegetation patterns that are familiar from a variety of other pattern-formation contexts, including fluid dynamics, chemical reactions and nonlinear optics [56]. A few examples of such patterns are shown in Figure 1.1. They consist of vegetation spots in an otherwise bare area devoid of vegetation (panel (a)), vegetation stripes (panel (b)), or barren gaps in vegetated areas (panel (c)). The understanding that vegetation patchiness is not merely dictated by environmental heterogeneities, but may also be a result of self-organization driven by pattern-forming instabilities of uniform states, has led to a surge of empirical and theoretical studies using the conceptual framework of pattern-formation theory [169, 155, 325, 128, 255, 256, 29, 212].
