ABSTRACT
Vegetation change and succession are closely related to nonlinear interactions between vegetation and groundwater in the mire [7,9,49,50]. Some research showed that lowering of the water table in salt marshes was due not to drainage but to water uptake by roots and suggested a feedback between plant growth, water uptake, and sediment oxidation [7]. Others [9,50] investigated whether the removal of riparian vegetation and clear cutting of forested wetlands caused a water table rise known as “watering up” and showed that this was caused mainly by reduced evapotranspiration and increased interception. As a result, the clear cutting of riparian and wetland vegetation might lead to ecosystem conversion such as encroachment [49,60]. We can also see various spatial vegetation patterns such as string and maze in the mire, which underlies self-organization and a positive feedback between hydrogeological change and plant growth [12,50,57]. Some of my group’s previous studies clari¤ed that spatial vegetation pattern and succession have a§ected the hydrogeological cycle at short time scales, although they didn’t include feedback processes at longer time scales [29,38,39]. Other studies simulated the evolution of vegetation patterns as a function of hydrogeological redistribution and estimated that the patterns emerge from facilitation and competition feedback of limiting water resource [26,27,48,50,59]. However, it is generally di©cult to simulate spatial heterogeneity and succession because these models don’t include dynamic e§ect of sediment deposition/erosion processes and their feedback e§ects on hydrology and vegetation dynamics. Recent research has shown the e§ect of dynamic vegetation on sediment deposition/erosion and landform evolution in humid areas [18] and arid areas [51]. It is important to further develop these models through observed information about the interaction between hydrological processes and ecological dynamics [2,20] to clarify the nonlinear interaction between geomorphology and eco-hydrology and its relation to succession and spatial patterning.
