Ecologists sometimes have a less-than-rigorous background in quantitative methods, yet research within this broad field is becoming increasingly mathematical. Written in a step-by-step fashion, Fractals and Multifractals in Ecology and Aquatic Science provides scientists with a basic understanding of fractals and multifractals and the techniques fo
Marine ecosystems, a very wide topic, includes many different processes, groups of organisms and geographical peculiarities. The objective of this book is to present various topics of great importance for understanding the marine ecosystems, what they are, how they work and how we can model them in order to forecast their behaviour under changing conditions. They have been thoroughly reviewed and accepted for publication. The chapters cover aspects such as: Threats to ultraoligotrophic marine ecosystems (Ch. 1); Modelling the pelagic ecosystem dynamics: the NW Mediterranean (Ch. 2); The marine ecosystem of the Sub-antarctic, Prince Edward Islands (Ch. 3); Meiofauna as a tool for marine ecosystem biomonitoring (Ch. 4); Chemical interactions in Antarctic marine benthic ecosystems (Ch. 5); An Interdisciplinary Approach on Erosion Mitigation for Coral Reef Protection- A Case Study from the Eastern Caribbean (Ch. 6); A revisit to the evolution and ecophysiology of the Labyrinthulomycetes (Ch. 7); Seabed mapping and marine spatial planning: a case-study from a Swedish marine protected area (Ch. 8); Management strategies to limit the impact of bottom trawling on VMEs in the High Seas of the SW Atlantic (Ch. 9); Hydrocarbon contamination and the swimming behavior of the estuarine copepod Eurytemora affinis (Ch. 10), and Interactions between marine ecosystems and tourism on the Adriatic and Mediterranean (Ch. 11).
The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the concepts and methods used in fractal analysis and modeling in order to study the spatial distribution of human settlements. The main concepts and mathematical tools are reviewed, and emphasis is placed on the practical benefits of their application and the pitfalls to be avoided when using them. The first part of the book is devoted to the basic concepts and geometric reference figures required for fractal analysis in human geography. In the second part, the principles of four major families of analysis methods are explained in detail: fractal analyses of point sequences, fractal methods for morphological delineation of urban agglomerations, multifractal analyses and cross scale signatures. The third part of the book is devoted to applications of fractal geometry in urban and regional planning.
This textbook, now in its second edition, provides a broad introduction to both continuous and discrete dynamical systems, the theory of which is motivated by examples from a wide range of disciplines. It emphasizes applications and simulation utilizing MATLAB®, Simulink®, the Image Processing Toolbox® and the Symbolic Math toolbox®, including MuPAD. Features new to the second edition include · sections on series solutions of ordinary differential equations, perturbation methods, normal forms, Gröbner bases, and chaos synchronization; · chapters on image processing and binary oscillator computing; · hundreds of new illustrations, examples, and exercises with solutions; and · over eighty up-to-date MATLAB program files and Simulink model files available online. These files were voted MATLAB Central Pick of the Week in July 2013. The hands-on approach of Dynamical Systems with Applications using MATLAB, Second Edition, has minimal prerequisites, only requiring familiarity with ordinary differential equations. It will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, applied mathematicians, engineers, and researchers in a broad range of disciplines such as population dynamics, biology, chemistry, computing, economics, nonlinear optics, neural networks, and physics. Praise for the first edition Summing up, it can be said that this text allows the reader to have an easy and quick start to the huge field of dynamical systems theory. MATLAB/SIMULINK facilitate this approach under the aspect of learning by doing. —OR News/Operations Research Spectrum The MATLAB programs are kept as simple as possible and the author's experience has shown that this method of teaching using MATLAB works well with computer laboratory classes of small sizes.... I recommend ‘Dynamical Systems with Applications using MATLAB’ as a good handbook for a diverse readership: graduates and professionals in mathematics, physics, science and engineering. —Mathematica
Seascape Ecology provides a comprehensive look at the state-of-the-science in the application of landscape ecology to the seas and provides guidance for future research priorities. The first book devoted exclusively to this rapidly emerging and increasingly important discipline, it is comprised of contributions from researchers at the forefront of seascape ecology working around the world. It presents the principles, concepts, methodology, and techniques informing seascape ecology and reports on the latest developments in the application of the approach to marine ecology and management. A growing number of marine scientists, geographers, and marine managers are asking questions about the marine environment that are best addressed with a landscape ecology perspective. Seascape Ecology represents the first serious effort to fill the gap in the literature on the subject. Key topics and features of interest include: The origins and history of seascape ecology and various approaches to spatial patterning in the sea The links between seascape patterns and ecological processes, with special attention paid to the roles played by seagrasses and salt marshes and animal movements through seascapes Human influences on seascape ecology—includes models for assessing human-seascape interactions A special epilogue in which three eminent scientists who have been instrumental in shaping the course of landscape ecology offer their insights and perspectives Seascape Ecology is a must-read for researchers and professionals in an array of disciplines, including marine biology, environmental science, geosciences, marine and coastal management, and environmental protection. It is also an excellent supplementary text for university courses in those fields.
The seminal text on fractal geometry for students and researchers: extensively revised and updated with new material, notes and references that reflect recent directions. Interest in fractal geometry continues to grow rapidly, both as a subject that is fascinating in its own right and as a concept that is central to many areas of mathematics, science and scientific research. Since its initial publication in 1990 Fractal Geometry: Mathematical Foundations and Applications has become a seminal text on the mathematics of fractals. The book introduces and develops the general theory and applications of fractals in a way that is accessible to students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Fractal Geometry: Mathematical Foundations and Applications is an excellent course book for undergraduate and graduate students studying fractal geometry, with suggestions for material appropriate for a first course indicated. The book also provides an invaluable foundation and reference for researchers who encounter fractals not only in mathematics but also in other areas across physics, engineering and the applied sciences. Provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the mathematical theory and applications of fractals Carefully explains each topic using illustrative examples and diagrams Includes the necessary mathematical background material, along with notes and references to enable the reader to pursue individual topics Features a wide range of exercises, enabling readers to consolidate their understanding Supported by a website with solutions to exercises and additional material www.wileyeurope.com/fractal Leads onto the more advanced sequel Techniques in Fractal Geometry (also by Kenneth Falconer and available from Wiley)
This book presents the fundamental theory for non-standard diffusion problems in movement ecology. Lévy processes and anomalous diffusion have shown to be both powerful and useful tools for qualitatively and quantitatively describing a wide variety of spatial population ecological phenomena and dynamics, such as invasion fronts and search strategies. Adopting a self-contained, textbook-style approach, the authors provide the elements of statistical physics and stochastic processes on which the modeling of movement ecology is based and systematically introduce the physical characterization of ecological processes at the microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic levels. The explicit definition of these levels and their interrelations is particularly suitable to coping with the broad spectrum of space and time scales involved in bio-ecological problems. Including numerous exercises (with solutions), this text is aimed at graduate students and newcomers in this field at the interface of theoretical ecology, mathematical biology and physics.
Intertidal mudflats are distinct, highly-productive marine habitats which provide important ecosystem services to the land-sea interface. In contrast to other marine habitats, and despite a large body of primary scientific literature, no comprehensive synthesis exists, such that the scattered knowledge base lacks an integrated conceptual framework. We attempt to provide this synthesis by pulling together and contextualizing the different disciplines, tools, and approaches used in the study of intertidal mudflats. The editor pays particular attention to relationships between the various components of the synthesis, both at the conceptual and the operational levels, validating these relationships through close interaction with the various authors.
Many statistical and methodological developments regarding fractal analyses have appeared in the scientific literature since the publication of the seminal texts introducing Fractal Physiology. However, the lion’s share of more recent work is distributed across many outlets and disciplines, including aquatic sciences, biology, computer science, ecology, economics, geology, mathematics, medicine, neuroscience, physics, physiology, psychology, and others. The purpose of this special topic is to solicit submissions regarding fractal and nonlinear statistical techniques from experts that span a wide range of disciplines. The articles will aggregate extensive cross-discipline expertise into comprehensive and broadly applicable resources that will support the application of fractal methods to physiology and related disciplines. The articles will be organized with respect to a continuum defined by the characteristics of the empirical measurements a given analysis is intended to confront. At one end of the continuum are stochastic techniques directed at assessing scale invariant but stochastic data. The next step in the continuum concerns self-affine random fractals and methods directed at systems that entail scale-invariant or 1/f patterns or related patterns of temporal and spatial fluctuation. Analyses directed at (noisy) deterministic signals correspond to the final stage of the continuum that relates the statistical treatments of nonlinear stochastic and deterministic signals. Each section will contain introductory articles, advanced articles, and application articles so readers with any level of expertise with fractal methods will find the special topic accessible and useful. Example stochastic methods include probability density estimation for the inverse power-law, the lognormal, and related distributions. Articles describing statistical issues and tools for discriminating different classes of distributions will be included. An example issue is distinguishing power-law distributions from exponential distributions. Modeling issues and problems regarding statistical mimicking will be addressed as well. The random fractal section will present introductions to several one-dimensional monofractal time-series analysis. Introductory articles will be accompanied by advanced articles that will supply comprehensive treatments of all the key fractal time series methods such as dispersion analysis, detrended fluctuation analysis, power spectral density analysis, and wavelet techniques. Box counting and related techniques will be introduced and described for spatial analyses of two and three dimensional domains as well. Tutorial articles on the execution and interpretation of multifractal analyses will be solicited. There are several standard wavelet based and detrended fluctuation based methods for estimating a multifractal spectrum. We hope to include articles that contrast the different methods and compare their statistical performance as well. The deterministic methods section will include articles that present methods of phase space reconstruction, recurrence analysis, and cross-recurrence analysis. Recurrence methods are widely applicable, but motivated by signals that contain deterministic patterns. Nonetheless recent developments such as the analysis of recurrence interval scaling relations suggest applicability to fractal systems. Several related statistical procedures will be included in this section. Examples include average mutual information statistics and false nearest neighbor analyses.
Our daily universe is rough and infinitely diverse. The fractal approach clarifies and orders these disparities. It helps us to envisage new explanations of geographical phenomena, which are, however, considered as definitely understood. Written for use by geographers and researchers from similar disciplines, such as ecologists, economists, historians and sociologists, this book presents the algorithms best adapted to the phenomena encountered, and proposes case studies illustrating their applications in concrete situations. An appendix is also provided that develops programs written in Mathematica. Contents 1. A Fractal World. 2. Auto-similar and Self-affine Fractals. 3. From the Fractal Dimension to Multifractal Spectrums. 4. Calculation and Interpretation of Fractal Dimensions. 5. The Fractal Dimensions of Rank-size Distributions. 6. Calculation and Interpretation of Multifractal Spectrums. 7. Geographical Explanation of Fractal Forms and Dynamics. 8. Using Complexity Theory to Explain a Fractal World. 9. Land-use Planning and Managing a Fractal Environment.
