An open-source spatio-dynamic wetland model of plant community responses to hydrological pressures

Javier Martínez-López, Julia Martínez-Fernández, Babak Naimi, María F. Carreño and Miguel A. Esteve

Ecological Modelling, 2015, vol. 306, issue C, 326-333

Abstract: Semiarid Mediterranean saline wetlands are semi-terrestrial ecosystems, which yearly undergo dry periods of several months, and shelter a rich, endemic and sensitive biota. In the last decades, the expansion of agricultural irrigated areas in semiarid Mediterranean catchments has led to altered inputs of water and nutrients to lowland wetlands. Hydrological alterations have affected characteristic plant communities, resulting in the replacement of valuable halophilic salt marsh and salt steppe plant communities by more generalist and opportunistic taxa, such as Phragmites australis (reed beds). A spatio-dynamic model and library were developed that aimed to explain the spatial distribution of three characteristic wetland plant communities in a semiarid Mediterranean wetland site in response to hydrological pressures from the catchment. Wetland plant communities and watershed irrigated agricultural areas were mapped by means of remote sensing at several dates between 1984 and 2008 and were partly used as forcing inputs and validation data. A dynamic model was initially developed using Stella software and then converted into R language by means of the StellaR software. Spatial dimension was added including neighbourhood and spatial flow algorithms representing the dispersion of plant communities. The conversion between plant communities was caused by the increase in water inflows from the watershed, mediated by spatial parameters, such as the distance to ephemeral rivers and the flow accumulation map within the wetland site. Results of the model were in agreement with remote sensing data, showing that in 2008 salt steppe had lost a half of its original area, whereas salt marsh and reed beds expanded extensively. The model developed in this study is available online as an R library, including all necessary input data sets and maps and documentation to run it. The model library offers a flexible tool that suits the needs of both advanced modellers and neophytes. Free and open source software and online code sharing repositories are proposed as modelling tools for future research.

Keywords: Semiarid wetlands; Remote sensing; Irrigated agriculture; Plant communities; Spatio-dynamic modelling; Open source software (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380014005973
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:306:y:2015:i:c:p:326-333

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2014.11.024

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().