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Pattern dynamics: an essay concerning principles, techniques, and applications

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Abstract

This Essay is response to the general question that I put to myself: How should I, an outsider to the topic, go about rationalising the notion of pattern and its dynamics when the pattern objects come from the vegetation? To facilitate succinct discussion of a very broad and intertwined topic, the Essay breaks down the pattern paradigm into three parts. The first part is concerned with the conceptual universe defined by the pattern objects, scale dependences, and order-chaos convolutions. The second part deals with the description of pattern and its evolution through time. The third, in the manner of a number of short comments, takes up pattern epidemiology, the Art of revealing cause and effect, extent, and significance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plant Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, N6A 5B7

    L. Orlóci

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  1. L. Orlóci
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Correspondence to L. Orlóci.

Additional information

The Essay is based on a paper first presented at the UNIDO-ICS inter-disciplinary workshop on “The tools for understanding landscape patterns”, organised by the Director and Program Consultant at ICS in co-operation with UNIDO and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The workshop was held at the AREA Science Research Park in Trieste, September 20–22, 2000.

Terms used in the Essay, if not otherwise defined therein, should be understood in their colloquial sense, the first meaning, given in a better interpretive dictionary of the English language.

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Orlóci, L. Pattern dynamics: an essay concerning principles, techniques, and applications. COMMUNITY ECOLOGY 2, 1–15 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1556/ComEc.2.2001.1.1

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