An important class of ecological problems concerns propagation processes. In ecological modelling, these phenomena generally occur on large scales and are generally difficult to simulate efficiently because of the number of entities. Studies of this kind of phenomena lack genericity and reusability because they are often presented from the point of view of a single domain expert. Simulations ma...

An important class of ecological problems concerns propagation processes. In ecological modelling, these phenomena generally occur on large scales and are generally difficult to efficiently simulate because of the number of entities and connections between entities. Studies of this kind of phenomena lack genericity and reusability because they are often presented through the point of view of a ...

E. D. CLARKE*, L. B. SPEAR†, M. L. MCCRACKEN‡, F. F. C. MARQUES*, D. L. BORCHERS*, S. T. BUCKLAND* and D. G. AINLEY† * Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling, University of St Andrews, The Observatory, Buchanan Gardens, Fife KY16 9LZ, UK; † H.T. Harvey & Associates Ecological Consultants, 3150 Almaden Expwy, Suite 145, San Jose, CA 95118, USA; and ‡ National Marine Fish...

The symposium 'What is Macroecology?' was held in London on 20 June 2012. The event was the inaugural meeting of the Macroecology Special Interest Group of the British Ecological Society and was attended by nearly 100 scientists from 11 countries. The meeting reviewed the recent development of the macroecological agenda. The key themes that emerged were a shift towards more explicit modelling o...

A three species food chain model is studied analytically as well as numerically. Integrability of the model is studied using Painlevé analysis while chaotic behaviour is studied using numerical techniques, such as calculation of Lyapunov exponents, plotting the bifurcation diagram and phase plots. We correct and critically comment on the wrong results reported recently on this ecological model,...

A remote sensing approach towards modelling the land cover pattern for controlling local soil erosion based on the universal soil loss equation (USLE) was developed. The approach was used to analyse the possible impact of land cover changes on local ecological security. Then, land cover pattern optimization aiming at the reduction of local soil erosion was taken. Results show that this method c...

Addressing environmental management problems at catchment scales requires an integrated modelling approach, in which key bio-physical and socio-economic drivers, processes and impacts are all considered. Development of Decision Support Systems (DSSs) for environmental management is rapidly progressing. This paper describes the integration of physical, ecological, and socio-economic components i...

Evolutionary algorithms have been used to tackle many problems over the years. Here we describe a system designed to investigate ecological theories by modelling the population dynamics of evolving plants in a digital environment. The system is called PLANTWORLD.

Agent-based modelling is widely used in social and ecological sciences. For biological processes it is an increasingly used technology. Here we used agent-based modelling to simulate the formation of actin filaments, which is a major part in the cytoskeleton of the cell and plays a role in a number of cell functions. We present in this paper three models with different levels of detail and show...

Ecological diffusion is a theory that can be used to understand and forecast spatio-temporal processes such as dispersal, invasion, and the spread of disease. Hierarchical Bayesian modelling provides a framework to make statistical inference and probabilistic forecasts, using mechanistic ecological models. To illustrate, we show how hierarchical Bayesian models of ecological diffusion can be im...