Self-organized criticality in forest-landscape evolution

J.C. Sprott; Janine Bolliger; David J. Mladenoff

Treesearch

Self-organized criticality in forest-landscape evolution

Informally Refereed

Authors:

J.C. Sprott, Janine Bolliger, David J. Mladenoff

Year:

2002

Type:

Scientific Journal

Station:

Northern Research Station

Source:

Physics Letters A 297:267-271

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Abstract

A simple cellular automaton replicates the fractal pattern of a natural forest landscape and predicts its evolution. Spatial distributions and temporal fluctuations in global quantities show power-law spectra, implying scale-invariance, characteristic of self-organized criticality. The evolution toward the SOC state and the robustness of that state to perturbations are described.

Keywords

Complexity, Self-organized criticality, Chaos, Cellular automata, Power laws

Citation

Sprott, J.C.; Bolliger, Janine; Mladenoff, David J. 2002. Self-organized criticality in forest-landscape evolution. Physics Letters A 297:267-271