A Stochastic Approach for Recovery Times of Coastal Dune Vegetation

The resilience of coastal dunes to environmental stress largely depends on vegetation recovery, which promotes sediment trapping and sand stabilization. However, post-disturbance recovery dynamics remain difficult to quantify due to the complex interplay between biotic and abiotic processes. Here, we introduce a novel analytical formulation for vegetation recovery time, defined as the time required to transition from a degraded to an optimal state. The approach is based on a minimal stochastic model that captures environmental variability while remaining computationally efficient, linking recovery dynamics to environmental forcings, dune morphology, and species-specific traits. Steady-state mean vegetation cover, (Formula presented.), biomass decay rate (Formula presented.) and aeolian integral timescale (Formula presented.) are observed to exert major influence on recovery times. This approach provides a simplified and analytically tractable description of coastal vegetation resilience, offering a basis for assessing ecosystem response under changing environmental forcing.