PhD defence Mingxuan Wu
Spatial self-organized patterns as living infrastructure
Building adaptive capacity across scales in patterned landscape
Spatial self-organized patterns are widespread across ecosystems. As climate change puts ecosystems under increasing stress, these patterns are often seen as warning signs of decline or even collapse. Beyond what spatial patterns can signal, this thesis investigates what these patterns can do.
The thesis first traces how simple photosynthetic life, in the form of microbial mats found in estuaries, can organize itself into complex, nested patterns across spatial scales. In tidal microbial mats, each additional level of spatial organization increased water retention and recovery after disturbance. It then provides field-based evidence that such spatial structure can actively mediate environmental stress: in salt-affected meadows, hummock–hollow patterns redistributed salt, sustaining plant productivity and reproduction under stressful conditions. Finally, by experimentally creating creek networks in young salt marshes, the thesis shows how deliberately introduced spatial structures can act as footholds for pioneer plants, increasing their survival, reproduction and chances of successful establishment.
Together, these studies trace a progression from how self-organized patterns are built, to how they support ecosystem functioning, and finally to how their underlying logic can be used in restoration. They reveal self-organization as a form of “living infrastructure” that helps ecosystems persist, recover and establish under changing conditions.