Can we infer plant facilitation from remote sensing? a test across global drylands

摘要: Facilitation is a major force shaping the structure and diversity of plant communities in terrestrial ecosystems. Detecting positive plant-plant interactions relies on combination field experimentation demonstration spatial association between neighboring plants. This has often restricted study facilitation to particular sites, limiting development systematic assessments over regional global scales. Here we explore whether frequency associations detected from high-resolution remotely sensed images can be used infer at community level drylands around globe. We correlated information freely available through Google Earth with detailed assessments, simple individual-based model generate patch-size distributions using different assumptions about type strength interactions. Most patterns found were more right skewed than null simulating random distribution. suggests that plants studied show stronger clustering expected by chance. co-occurrence, as measured field, was significantly related skewness vegetation distribution images. Our findings suggest relative may inferred pattern signals images, since determines co-occurrence among They pave road for assessment role