Recurrence Analysis of Vegetation Time Series and Phase Transitions in Mediterranean Rangelands

Mediterranean rangelands should be conceived as socio-ecological landscapes(SEL) because of the close interaction and coevolution between socio-economicand natural systems. A significant threat to these Mediterranean rangelands isrelated to uncontrolled fires that can cause potential damages due to thereduction or even the loss of ecosystems. Our results show that time series offorest and grassland for unburned and burned areas are characterized by bothperiodic and chaotic components. The fire event caused a clear simplificationof vegetation structures as well as of SEL dynamics that is more regular andpredictable after the burning and less chaotic. However grassland evolutioncould be more predictable than forest considering the effect of firedisturbance on successional cycles and stages of the two land-cover types. Inparticular, we applied recurrence analysis with sliding temporal windowsthree-year length on the original time series. This analysis indicates thatgrasslands and forests behaved similarly in correspondence with the burning,although their phase states slowly diverge after fire. Recurrence is useful tostudy the vegetation recovery as it enables mapping landscape transitionsderived from remote sensing. The approach helps stakeholders to draw landscapeinterventions and improve management strategies to sustain the delivery ofecosystem services.