Specific Methods of Study

Abstract

Banded vegetation is composed of two interacting and interdependent “phases”: a vegetated phase and a more-or-less bare phase. Both phases are oriented along the contours and alternate along the main slope. As an array of bands in a landscape, the product is a system operating to display unique larger functional properties (Archer and Smeins 1991). The bare (or sparsely covered) soil zone acts as an impluvium because it generates a high proportion of runoff (Peugeot et al. 1997). The densely vegetated zone downslope (runon or sink area) intercepts and absorbs runoff water due to high infiltration rates (Delhoume 1992;Green, Kinell, and Wood 1994; Galle, Ehrmann, and Peugeot 1999). The two combined phases constitute the basic functional unit of the banded landscape, repeated many times across the landscape.