Open AccessPEST OUTBREAKS CONTROL: THE APPROACH OF PEAK‐TO‐PEAK DYNAMICS
Author(s) -
CIRITA SERGIO RINALDI,
PICCARDI CARLO,
GRAGNANI ALESSANDRA
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.tb00055.x
Subject(s) - aperiodic graph , outbreak , randomness , pest analysis , mathematics , pest control , ecology , insect pest , statistics , econometrics , computer science , biology , combinatorics , agronomy , botany , virology
ABSTRACT. Insect pest outbreaks in natural and exploited forests are often recursive but aperiodic. We show, by means of a continuous‐time model, that the randomness of these devastating episodes is a very special kind of deterministic chaos, known as peak‐to‐peak dynamics, since the intensity of any outbreak can be predicted from that of the previous episode. This fact allows one to solve various control problems such as the minimization of the mean damage associated with the pest outbreaks or the regularization of their time pattern.