著者

島谷 健一郎

出版者

日本生態学会

雑誌

日本生態学会誌 (ISSN:00215007)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.2, pp.87-106, 2001-08-30

被引用文献数

8

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This paper reviews the point process theory focusing on applications to spatial ecology when data are given by a tree distribution map, often together with additional information such as tree size, species, and genotype.Beginning with a rather intuitive definition of point processes, this paper explains several functions that are useful for illustrating the basic characteristics of tree spatial patterns, followed by remarks about the basic assumption of stationality and isotropy.A variety of convenient statistics that express spatial patterns for additional information are introduced with reference to tree sizes, species, and genotypes.When such exploratory analysis reveals some characteristic spatial patterns, the nest step is to construct mathematical models that can explain a given tree distribution, then checking the model fitting by simulation.Currently, the point process theory itself is at the developmental stage and its practical power in ecology is uncertain.However, it can, at least, be applied to exploratory analysis for finding basic characteristics in spatial patterns.Point processing can be expected to have various other applications for analyzing mapped data.