Article to be published in Ecohydrology

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We’ve just gotten news that an article written by Lizzie King (along with co-authors Trenton Franz, and Kelly) has been accepted for publication in the journal Ecohydrology. The article, “Ecohydrological interactions in a degraded two-phase mosaic dryland: implications for regime shifts, resilience, and restoration” is known more familiarly in the Caylor group as “Plants Behaving Badly”.

Conceptual Figure It is the culmination of 3-4 years of thinking, measuring, analyzing, and occasionally cursing the hydrological and ecological factors leading to expansion of a native succulent species of Sanseveria in the communal group ranches adjacent to our research site in central Kenya. Along the way to completion of this work we learned a lot about this plant, the soils it lives in, the difficulty of walking through thick glades of it carrying heavy electromagnetic induction sensors, and its ability to thrive in the absence of water or any affection/interest from any other forms of life. We also figured out that the story of how this plant expands into degraded landscapes allowed us to make substantial headway towards a real-life, fully-quantified application of ecosystem management based on conceptual models arising from resilience theory coupled to scale-dependent feedbacks. As usual, Lizzie did a bang-up job telling this story, and we’re excited to see it finally coming to the pages of a journal in the near future. As for the Sanseveria… well, let’s just say we’re looking forward to applying our management suggestions for its suppression as soon as possible!