Regions growing with the stochastic pyramid: Application in landscape ecology

• Published in: Pattern recognition Vol. 29; no. 1; pp. 61 - 75
• Main Authors: Chiarello, Ernest, Jolion, Jean-Michel, Amoros, Claude
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 1996; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Biological and medical sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Ecological succession; Exact sciences and technology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects. Techniques; Image pyramids; Methods and techniques (sampling, tagging, trapping, modelling...); Pattern recognition. Digital image processing. Computational geometry; Random patterns; River fllodplains; Image pyramids; Random patterns; River fllodplains; Ecological succession; Pyramidal shape; Flood plain; Pattern generator; Parallelism; Rivers; Stochastic method; Modeling
• ISSN: 0031-3203; 1873-5142
• DOI: 10.1016/0031-3203(95)00064-X

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.