Resolving soil and surface water flux as drivers of pattern formation in Turing models of dryland vegetation: A unified approach

Over the past two decades, multi-component dryland vegetation models have been successful in qualitatively reproducing the spatial vegetation patterns widely observed in nature. In the two-component (water, vegetation) Klausmeier model, water flow from bare to vegetated areas drives pattern formation. The more elaborate Rietkerk and Gilad three-component models make a distinction between soil and surface water. In this article the three models are approximated from within a unifying framework, with a focus on processes that drive pattern formation, in order to promote the understanding of similarities and differences between these models. Reduction from a model with a separate soil and surface water component, to a model with a single water component, preserves Turing instability in all but one of the cases studied.