Regions growing with the stochastic pyramid: Application in landscape ecology

摘要

The stochastic pyramid is introduced in landscape ecology in order to propose a spatial organization model of ecological units in river floodplains. It consists in articulating this parallel generator of random patterns with ecological processes. The stochastic pyramid, based on a hierarchy of seed structures, is used to make regions grow in order to obtain random patterns relating to an a priori model. The first level, represented by the lattice, is obtained after a biased random draw and the upper levels are built with a double controlled process of decimation and expansion of the seeds. The resulting pictures present both deterministic and stochastic spatial patterns according to ecological reality.