Publications
Highlights
The full list of publications is at the end of the page and on Google Scholar.
Using ultra-high resolution data on spatial patterns of biological crust communities and vascular plants at 26 sites across three ecoregion of the US Southwest, we show that species interactions might play a major role in organizing the spatial patterning of dryland vegetation. This leads to the idea of ecosystem spatial self-organization at the community level.
D Kozar, B Weber, Y Zhang, X Dong
Climate change will change the distribution of ecosystems and the delivery of ecological benefits. In this paper, we evaluated the implications of ecosystem changes for human welfare. Here we estimate country-level changes in economic production and the value of non-market ecosystem benefits resulting from climate-change-induced shifts.
BA Bastien-Olvera, MN Conte, X Dong, T Briceno, D Batker, J Emmerling, M Tavoni, F Granella, FC Moore
What happens to the community stability under climate change? Using long-term datasets from Sycamore Creek, Arizona, we found tha the mechanisms historically governing community stability become largely weakened as climate changes. Some may even flip to a destabilizing force and drive ecological communities to a state of much lower stability and higher sensitivity to environmental fluctuations.
J Wang, NB Grimm, SP Lawler, X Dong
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (2023)
Commentary by Stephen T. Jackson
What explains the regular iron banding in soils? Soil redox conditions, driven by environmental variability, are highly dynamic. We show that two sets of scale-dependent feedbacks are coupled to form redox patterns and environmental variability plays a critical role by dictating the likelihood of pattern formation. The temporal dimension in spatial self-organization has rarely been reported before.
X Dong, D de Richter, A Thompson, J Wang
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (2023)
Does the type of bedrock an ecosystem is located on affect how sensitive an ecosystem is to climatic variability? This global analysis shows that the answer is yes. Variation in ecosystem sensitivity is significantly affected by regolith porosity and permeability and regolith and soil thickness, through their control on ecosystem water holding capacity.
X Dong, JB Martin, MJ Cohen, T Tu
Communications Earth and Environment (2023)
Are ecosystems with higher biodiversity more stable? We combine data on the distribution of 57,500 plant species and remote-sensing observations in theWestern Hemisphere to investigate the role of multiple facets to diversity (species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and functional diversity) in mediating the ecosystem sensitivity to climatic variability. Regions of greater plant diversity exhibit lower sensitivity to temperature variability.
B Oliveira, FC Moore, X Dong
Plants can affect landscape morphology and the altered landscapes can feed back to affect the evolution of plants. I built a toy model to couple landscape development with the evolution of plants and their niche construction traits. I then used this paper to investigate the consequences of such coupling for landscape morphology and dynamics and for the evolutionary trajectory of plants
X Dong
The American Naturalist (2022)
Air-water gas transfer velocity influences fundamental processes of aquatic systems such as photosynthesis, respiration, and greenhouse gas emission. In this paper, we tested two universal scalings to predict gas transfer velocity, deduced from classic thin-film theory and surface renewal theory. We found that two scalings outperformed all 23 previous models in prediction.
J Wang, F Bombardelli, X Dong
Water Resources Research (2021)
Why the limestone depressions in South Florida are evenly spaced across the landscape? We formalized a new mechanism of pattern formation, i.e., boundary competition among pattern elements of finite amplitude stabilized by scale-dependent feedback in time. Scale-dependent feedback in time stabilizes the individual depressions and induces the boundary competition between depressions for surface water, giving rise to the spatial regularity.
X Dong, AB Murray, JB Heffernan
Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surface (2021)
Featured as ‘Research Highlight’ in Eos by Ton Hoitink
River and stream water chemistry is influenced by organisms and physical environment, resulting in longitudinal (upstream-downstream) heterogeneity. This study finds evidence of substantial internal regulation of surface-water nutrient patterns, realized by spatial feedbacks.
X Dong, A Ruhi, NB Grimm
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (2017)
Full List of publications
Spatial Signatures of Biological Soil Crusts and Community Level Self-Organization in Drylands
D Kozar, B Weber, Y Zhang, X Dong
Ecosystems (2024)
Scaling from global to regional river flow with global hydrological models: Choice matters
T Tu, J Wang, G Zhao, T Zhao, X Dong
Journal of Hydrology (2024)
Unequal climate impacts on global values of natural capital
BA Bastien-Olvera, MN Conte, X Dong, T Briceno, D Batker, J Emmerling, M Tavoni, F Granella, FC Moore
Nature (2024)
Changing climate and reorganized species interactions modify community responses to climate variability
J Wang, NB Grimm, SP Lawler, X Dong
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (2023)
Fairy circle tales
X Dong
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (2023)
The Primacy of Temporal Dynamics in Driving Spatial Self-organization of Soil Redox Patterns
X Dong, D de Richter, A Thompson, J Wang
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (2023)
Recovery from Acid Rain in the Mississippi River Basin
D Kozar, X Dong, L Li
Science of The Total Environment (2023)
Bedrock mediates responses of ecosystem productivity to climate variability
X Dong, JB Martin, MJ Cohen, T Tu
Communications Earth and Environment (2023)
Learning from arid and urban aquatic ecosystems to inform more sustainable and resilient futures
L McPhillips, M Berbes-Blazquez, R Hale, TK Harms, V Bisht, L Caughman, SM Clinton, E Cook, X Dong, J Edmonds, S Gergel, R Gomez, K Hopkins, DM Iwaniec, Y Kim, A Kuhn, L Larson, DB Lewis, E Marti, M Palta, WJ Roach, L Ye
Journal of Hydrology (2022)
Biodiversity mediates ecosystem sensitivity to climate variability
B Oliveira, FC Moore, X Dong
Communications Biology (2022)
Evolution of plant niche construction traits in biogeomorphic landscapes
X Dong
The American Naturalist (2022)
Noah’s Ark in a warming world: climate change, biodiversity loss and public adaptation costs in the United States
FC Moore, A Stokes, M Conte, X Dong
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (2021)
Physically based scaling models to predict gas transfer velocity in streams and rivers
J Wang, F Bombardelli, X Dong
Water Resources Research (2021)
Competition among limestone depressions leads to self-organized regular patterning on a flat landscape
X Dong, AB Murray, JB Heffernan
Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surface (2021)
A trait-based approach to self-organized pattern formation in ecology
X Dong
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2020)
Ecohydrologic feedbacks controlling sizes of cypress wetlands in a patterned karst landscape
X Dong, AB Murray, JB Heffernan
Earth Surface Processes and Landforms (2019)
Ecosystem self-organization: free order for nothing?
X Dong, SG Fisher
Ecological Complexity (2019)
Interactions between Physical Template and Self-organization Shape Plant Dynamics in a Stream Ecosystem
X Dong, NB Grimm, JB Heffernan, R Muneepeerakul
Ecosystems (2019)
Foundations and frontiers of ecosystem science: Legacy of a classic paper (Odum 1969)
R Corman, SL Collins, EM Cook, X Dong, LA Gherardi, NB Grimm, RL Hale, T Lin, J Ramos, LG Reichmann, OE Sala
Ecosystems (2019)
Detrimental effects of a novel flow regime on the functional trajectory of an aquatic invertebrate metacommunity
A Ruhi, X Dong, CH McDaniel, DP Batzer, JL Sabo
Global Change Biology (2018)
Mass balance implies Holocene development of a low-relief karst patterned landscape
CA Chamberlin, TS Bianchi, AL Brown, MJ Cohen, X Dong, MK Flint, JB Martin, DL McLaughlin, AB Murray, A Pain, CJ Quintero, ND Ward, X Zhang, JB Heffernan
Chemical Geology (2018)
Ecohydrologic processes and soil cover feedbacks control limestone-weathering rate in a karst landscape
X Dong, MJ Cohen, JB Martin, DL McLaughlin, AB Murray, ND Ward, MK Flint, JB Heffernan
Chemical Geology (2018)
Evidence for self-organization in determining spatial patterns of stream nutrients, despite primacy of the geomorphologic template
X Dong, A Ruhi, NB Grimm
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (2017)
Importance of neutral processes varies in time and space: evidence from dryland stream ecosystems
X Dong, DA Lytle, JD Olden, TA Schriever, R Muneepeerakul
PLoS ONE (2017)
What are the type, direction, and strength of species, community, and ecosystem responses to warming in aquatic mesocosm studies and their dependency on experimental characteristics? A systematic review protocol
T Guy-Haim, H Alexander, TW Bell, RL Bier, LE Bortolotti, C Briseño-Avena, X Dong, AM Flanagan, J Grosse, L Grossmann, S Hasnain, R Hovel, CA Johnston, DR Miller, M Muscarella, AE Noto, AJ Reisinger, HJ Smith, K Stamieszkin
Environmental Evidence (2017)
Ecological Dissertation in the Aquatic Sciences (Eco-DAS): An excellent networking and professional development opportunity for early career aquatic scientists
PT Kelly, T Bell, AJ Reisinger, TL Spanbauer, LE Bortolotti, JA Brentrup, C Briseño-Avena, X Dong, AM Flanagan, EM Follett, J Grosse, T Guy-Haim, MA Holgerson, RA Hovel, JY Luo, NC Millette, A Mine, ME Muscarella, SK Oliver, HJ Smith
Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin (2017)
Inter-annual hydrological variability modified response of wetland distribution to geomorphology
X Dong, NB Grimm, K Ogle, J Franklin
Journal of Ecology (2016)
The effect of spatial configuration of habitat capacity on beta diversity
X Dong, R Muneepeerakul, JD Olden, DA Lytle
Ecosphere (2015)
The long-term impact of urbanization on nitrogen patterns and dynamics in Shanghai, China
BJ Gu, X Dong, C Peng, W Luo, J Chang, Y Ge
Environmental Pollution (2012)