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Natural grasses in semiarid rangelands constitute an effective protectionagainst soil erosion and degradation, are a source of natural food forlivestock and play a critical role in the hydrologic cycle by contributingto the uptake and transpiration of water. However, natural pastures arethreatened by land abandonment and the consequent encroachment of shrubs andtrees as well as by changing climatic conditions. In spite of theirecological and economic importance, the spatiotemporal variations ofpasture production at the decadal–century scales over whole watershedsare poorly known. We used a physically based, spatially distributedecohydrologic model applied to a 99.5 ha semiarid watershed in western Spainto investigate the sensitivity of pasture production to climate variability.The ecohydrologic model was run using a 300-year-long synthetic dailyclimate data set generated using a stochastic weather generator. The data setreproduced the range of climatic variations observed under the current climate.Results indicated that variation of pasture production largely depended onfactors that also determined the availability of soil moisture such as thetemporal distribution of precipitation, topography, and tree canopy cover.The latter is negatively related with production, reflecting the importanceof rainfall and light interception, as well as water consumption by trees.Valley bottoms and flat areas in the lower parts of the catchment arecharacterized by higher pasture production but more interannual variability.A quantitative assessment of the quality of the simulations showed thatecohydrologic models are a valuable tool to investigate long-term (centuryscale) water and energy fluxes, as well as vegetation dynamics, in semiaridrangelands

Climate and topographic controls on simulated pasture production in a semiarid Mediterranean watershed with scattered tree cover