Broad scaling region in a spatial ecological system

Roy, Manojit; Pascual, Mercedes; Franc, Alain

doi:10.1002/cplx.10096

Cited by 28 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Similar power-law distribution phenomena have 9 also been detected in a number of other ecosystems including mussel beds 10 [7] and marine benthic diatoms [8]. This phenomena of a power-law distri-11 bution transitioning to an exponential distribution under increasing stress 12 has recently shown to be robust, where diverse ecological models are able to 13 reproduce these results [2].…”

supporting

confidence: 56%

Aggregation dynamics explain vegetation patch-size distributions

Irvine

Bull

Keeling

2016

Theoretical Population Biology

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Vegetation patch-size distributions have been an intense area of study for theoreticians and applied ecologists alike in recent years. Of particular interest is the seemingly ubiquitous nature of power-law patch-size distributions emerging in a number of diverse ecosystems. The leading explanation of the emergence of these power-laws is due to local facilitative mechanisms. There is also a common transition from power law to exponential distribution when a system is under global pressure, such as grazing or lack of rainfall. These phenomena require a simple mechanistic explanation. Here, we study vegetation patches from a spatially implicit, patch dynamic viewpoint. We show that under minimal assumptions a power-law patch-size distribution appears as a natural consequence of aggregation. A linear death term also leads to an exponential term in the distribution for any non-zero death rate. This work shows the origin of the breakdown of the power-law under increasing pressure and shows that in general, we expect to observe a power law with an exponential cutoff (rather than pure power laws). The estimated parameters of this distribution also provide insight into the underlying ecological mechanisms of aggregation and death.

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supporting

confidence: 56%

Aggregation dynamics explain vegetation patch-size distributions

Irvine

Bull

Keeling

2016

Theoretical Population Biology

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“…3), one of which is centered on the percolation threshold, and represents a transition between fires that are mostly small and cannot propagate across a landscape and larger ones that can. This characterizes a phase transition in landscape dynamics over a narrow range of values for the parameter p spread , a region of criticality 15,16 in which we find that the SD variograms follow power laws.…”

Section: Percolation Thresholdmentioning

confidence: 75%

Power laws reveal phase transitions in landscape controls of fire regimes

McKenzie

Kennedy

2012

Nat Commun

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understanding the environmental controls on historical wildfires, and how they changed across spatial scales, is difficult because there are no surviving explicit records of either weather or vegetation (fuels). Here we show how power laws associated with fire-event time series arise in limited domains of parameters that represent critical transitions in the controls on landscape fire. Comparison to a self-organized criticality model shows that the latter mimics historical fire only in a limited domain of criticality, and is not an adequate mechanism to explain landscape fire dynamics, which are shaped by both endogenous and exogenous controls. our results identify a continuous phase transition in landscape controls, marked by power laws, and provide an ecological analogue to critical behaviour in physical and chemical systems. This explicitly crossscale analysis provides a paradigm for identifying critical thresholds in landscape dynamics that may be crossed in a rapidly changing climate.

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“…4b) as would be suggested if the system is near criticality 15 . Further studies of the model show that there is a broad region of parameter space in which the power law holds, suggesting that this may be a case of robust criticality 16 . The importance of these results lies in the fact that strong spatial pattern is formed in the face of habitat homogeneity, connecting with the well-known consequences of spatial pattern on topics such as species diversity, ecosystem stability or resiliency and others.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%