Impact of Drought on Desert Shrubs: Effects of Seasonality and Degree of Resource Island Development

Large areas of semiarid grasslands in the southwestern United States have been virtually replaced by shrubs during the past century. Understanding the causes and consequences of such vegetation dynamics requires that we elucidate the interplay between external forces of change (e.g., climate, human impacts) and the internal forces within these ecosystems that foster resilience and/or stability. Several conceptual models of arid ecosystems address this interplay by including the potential role of autogenic shrub effects on ecosystem processes, which lead to the formation of “resource islands” and tend to promote shrub persistence. Specifically, during the process of shrub establishment and maturation, the cycling of nutrients is progressively confined to the zones of litter accumulation beneath shrubs, while bare intershrub spaces become increasingly nutrient poor. As shrub resource islands develop, there is increased interception and stemflow by shrub canopies, confining infiltration of nutrient-enriched ...