Open AccessSPATIAL PATTERN INDUCED BY ASYMMETRIC COMPETITION: A MODELING APPROACH
Author(s) -
PICARD NICOLAS,
BARHEN AVNER,
ENGREF ALAIN FRANC
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
natural resource modeling
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.28
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1939-7445
pISSN - 0890-8575
DOI - 10.1111/j.1939-7445.2001.tb00054.x
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , rainforest , spatial ecology , competition model , tree (set theory) , range (aeronautics) , cluster analysis , common spatial pattern , pattern formation , growth model , scale (ratio) , mathematics , ecology , statistical physics , econometrics , geography , economics , physics , statistics , mathematical economics , biology , combinatorics , microeconomics , cartography , profit (economics) , materials science , genetics , composite material
. The paper addresses the question: how does asymmetric competition for light affect the spatial pattern of trees? It is based on an individual‐based spatially explicit model of forest dynamics, whose growth equations are derived from gap models. The model is calibrated on a stand of natural rainforest in French Guiana, where the tree pattern exhibits regularity at short distances (< 10 m) and clustering at medium distances (∼ 30 m). The model reproduces the regularity but not the clustering. As mortality and recruitment have been modeled so as to favor a random pattern, we conclude that regularity emerges from the asymmetric competition in the growth submodel. Also the scale at which regularity appears is linked to the range of interactions between trees.