The Brazilian Cerrado is a vegetation mosaic composed of different physiognomies. Discussions remain open regarding the factors and processes responsible for the dynamic and spatial organization of the Cerrado -in its different physiognomies. The contributions of the complexity paradigm in this context are still less exploited, despite its great potential for explanations and predictions presented in previous diverse dynamic systems of complex behavior researches, a category in which the Cerrado can be included. This article has the intention of contributing to the construction of this new perspective, discussing -from theoretical concepts -the paradigm of complexity for the understanding of the organization and the dynamics of the Cerrado.
This work is a generalization of the López-Ruiz, Mancini, and Calbet (LMC) and Shiner, Davison, and Landsberg (SDL) complexity measures, considering that the state of a system or process is represented by a continuous temporal series of a dynamical variable. As the two complexity measures are based on the calculation of informational entropy, an equivalent information source is defined by using partitions of the dynamical variable range. During the time intervals, the information associated with the measured dynamical variable is the seed to calculate instantaneous LMC and SDL measures. To show how the methodology works generating indicators, two examples, one concerning meteorological data and the other concerning economic data, are presented and discussed.
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