Fitness landscape analysis provides insight into the structural features of optimization problems. Landscape analysis techniques have been individually shown to capture specific continuous landscape features. However, results are typically for benchmark and artificial problems, and so the ability of techniques to capture real-world problem structures remains largely unknown. In this paper we ex...

We study self-replicating molecules under externally varying conditions. Changing conditions such as temperature variations and/or alterations in the environment’s resource composition lead to both non-constant replication and decay rates of the molecules. In general, therefore, molecular evolution takes place in a dynamic rather than a static fitness landscape. We incorporate dynamic replicati...

There are many applications that require rendered 3D terrain, whether it be computer games or complex geographical research. The methods used to represent terrain, generate realistic terrain and render terrain are studied in an attempt to better understand how people have previously tackled the key issues. The idea of fractal nature is studied and the effects, positive and negative, this has on...

Landscape ecology starts from the assumption that diversity and spatial arrangement of ecosystem mosaics have ecological implications and tries to understand the interactions between diversity and structure of large spatially heterogeneous areas and their ecological functions. These assumptions imply effective use of earth observation techniques and geographic information systems, enabling a gl...

Scale and Scaling Scale is an essential concept in both natural and social sciences, and has been defined in several different ways (Gibson et al. [4], van Gardingen [19], Peterson and Parker [16], Marceau [12], Withers and Meentemeyer [21], Jenerette and Wu [6]). In landscape ecology, scale refers primarily to grain (or resolution) and extent in space or/and time. Scale may be absolute (measur...

Background concepts of the landscape research performed at the Department of Geography of the University of Ghent are described, discussed and illustrated with some examples. The integrated approach is based upon holism, perception and evolution. Holism allows the link between landscape ecology and perception. It explains the interaction between structure and functioning and the importance of t...

Quadrats are standard sampling units of relatively small, uniformly defined areas that divide a habitat of interest into subregions of equal size. They are used in ecography for 2-dimensional sampling of plants, slowmoving animals, and (more recently) microorganisms to (i) estimate population sizes when it is not feasible to measure their abundance in entirety, (ii) define the patterns of their...

Article history: Received 22 November 2005 Received in revised form 8 March 2006 Accepted 12 March 2006 In all natural populations, individuals located close to one another tend to interact more than those further apart. The extent of population viscosity can have important implications for ecological and evolutionary processes. Here we develop a spatially explicit population model to examine h...

Oasis stability in the lower reaches of the Tarim River was assessed at the landscape scale (including changes in landscape pattern and land use in the oasis) and at the regional scale (including the cold-island effect and NDVI of the oasis) based on the methods of landscape ecology, GIS and Remote Sensing (RS). Thematic Mapping (TM) remote sensing images from 1990, 2000 and 2009 were employed ...