Coarse graining of an individual-based plant model

: The evolution and structuring of plant communities is governed by local plant-to-plant interaction. It has been shown that the individual variability of the organisms and the spatial neighbor constellation is essential for plant system dynamics. Therefore, several spatially explicit individual-based model approaches for plant communities have been developed in the last decades. Among these the field of neighborhood approach is promising as it describes the system at an intermediate level of complexity. A present limitation of this approach, and many other individualbased models, is that it can only be studied by simulation. In general simulations of large individual-based models are computational demanding and reveal only limited information on the long-term dynamics of the system. Here, we report ongoing work that aims to investigate the dynamics of field of neighborhood by a numerical coarse-graining technique. This so-called "equation-free" method, uses short burst of in...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: GI
• Authors: Johannes Hoefener, Lars Rudolf, Uta Berger, Thilo Gross
• Keywords: Explicit Individual-based Model, GI 2009, Individual-based Model, Plant Communities, Theoretical Computer Science