Assessing mutuality of change in soil and vegetation patch pattern characteristics by means of Cellular Automata simulation

Mutual variations in soil and vegetation pattern characteristics have not received much attention despite their role in the evolution of eco-geomorphic systems. Five landscape metrics were employed to characterize complementary soil and vegetation patterns of patches over a wide range of densities: number, density, size heterogeneity, shape and dominance. These metrics were calculated for a large number of modeled patterns based on a Cellular Automata technique, employing four separate vegetation spread strategies at different adhesive growth levels. As indicated by the data, mutual variations in the soil and vegetation metrics allow differentiation between the pattern evolution stages such as perforation, dissection, fragmentation, shrinkage and attrition of one surface type due to the spread, expansion and aggregation of a complementary surface type. Such information may be indicative of the hydro-geomorphological processes taking place.