STEPWAT2: an individual‐based model for exploring the impact of climate and disturbance on dryland plant communities

摘要: The combination of climate change and altered disturbance regimes is directly indirectly affecting plant communities by mediating competitive interactions, resulting in shifts species composition abundance. Dryland communities, defined low soil water availability highly variable climatic regimes, are particularly vulnerable to changes that exceed their historical range variability. Individual-based simulation models can be important tools quantify the impacts change, interaction on demographic community-level responses because they represent interactions between individuals individual fluctuating environmental conditions. Here, we introduce STEPWAT2, an plant-based model for exploring joint influence dryland ecohydrology community composition. STEPWAT2 utilizes a process-based (SOILWAT2) simulate available multiple layers, which compete based temporal matching active root distributions with depth. This representation resource utilization makes useful understanding how moisture will concurrently impact drylands. Our goals threefold: (1) describe core modules functions within (model description), (2) validate output using field data from big sagebrush validation), (3) highlight usefulness as modeling framework examining under future conditions application). To address 2 3, focus 15 sites span spatial extent western United States. For goal fire, grazing interact functional type biomass We use sagebrush-dominated demonstrate functionality these among most widespread ecosystems North America.