Neutral modelling of agricultural landscapes by tessellation methods—Application for gene flow simulation

Abstract

Abstract. Neutral landscape models are not frequently used in the agronomical domain, whereas they would be very useful for studying given agro-ecological or physical processes. Contrary to ecological neutral landscape models, agricultural models have to represent and manage geometrical patches and thus should rely on tessellation methods. We present a three steps approach that aimed at simulating such landscapes. Firstly, we characterized the geometry of three real field patterns; secondly, we generated simulated field patterns with two tessellation methods attempting to control the value of some of the observed characteristics and, thirdly, we evaluated the simulated field patterns. For this evaluation, we considered that good simulated field patterns should capture characteristics of real landscapes that are important for the targeted agro-ecological process. Real landscapes and landscapes simulated using either a Voronoi or a rectangular tessellation were thus compared when used as input data within a gene flow model. The results showed that neither tessellation method captured field shapes correctly, thus leading to over or (small) Voronoi tessellation, though, performed better than the rectangular tessellation. Possible research directions are proposed to improve the simulated patterns, including the use of post-processing, the control of cell orientation or the implementation of other tessellation techniques.

3D Modeling of Discontinuity in the Spatial Distribution of Apartment Prices Using Voronoi Diagrams

“…Tessellation is understood as a method consisting of the division of a selected surface or space into a set of pre-defined geometric figures, which fill this area completely without leaving gaps or creating overlapping shapes [20,21]. The polygons formed in this way are referred to as cells, and the set of points on which they are based, to seeds, or nuclei [22]. The geometry of cells defined in this way (size, shape, orientation), as well as their spatial distribution (regularly or irregularly grouped patterns), maybe a tool for the identification of hierarchical relationships within spatial arrangements in relation to the attributes, both typically geographical and social phenomena.…”

“…As a rule, tessellation is divided into methods based on regular or irregular shapes [22,32], as shown in Figure 3.…”

“…examine real estate prices and their dynamics [19]. As a rule, tessellation is divided into methods based on regular or irregular shapes [22,32], as shown in Figure 3. Voronoi diagrams are a method for dividing Euclidean space [35], which takes into account the relationships between points and their surroundings when they are combined into groups as a result of context generalization based on the similarity of geographical structures of the analyzed area [36].…”

An improved neutral landscape model for recreating real landscapes and generating landscape series for spatial ecological simulations

“…Variations to the above methods are, for instance, hierarchical or curdled maps (Gardner ), vector‐based maps with irregular patch shapes (Le Ber et al. ), or random combinations of Gaussian functions (Wiegand et al. ).…”

Simulating the effects of spatial configurations of agricultural ditch drainage networks on surface runoff from agricultural catchments

“…network density and topology, a landscape structural property, and surface runoff, a landscape functioning property. To explore the relationship between the structure and the function of a landscape, the usual way to proceed in environmental sciences is to couple stochastic landscape structure simulations to a landscape functioning model (Viaud et al , ; Gumiere, ; Le Ber et al , ; Colin et al , ; Van Nieuwenhuyse et al , ). To date, there has not been an equivalent study of the impacts of agricultural ditch drainage networks on runoff.…”