Uses and abuses of fractal methodology in ecology

By J. Halley, S. Hartley, A. Kallimanis, W. Kunin, J. Lennon, S. Sgardelis. 2004

339 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Condensed Matter Physics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b767ad0f4799b74b81c3ecb3214dd5dcc7b6395a

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In Atmospheric Science

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

New Insights into Pelagic Migrations: Implications for Ecology and Conservation (2012, methodology): “Fractal analyses have been especially popular and useful in landscape ecology (Halley et al. 2004, Turcotte 1997) and were introduced as a method to quantify animal movement by Dicke & Burrough (1988).”
Does macrophyte fractal complexity drive invertebrate diversity, biomass and body size distributions? (2005, background): “more or less fractal in a strict sense, one should ideally estimate D across at least two order of magnitude of measurement (Halley et al. 2004).”
Effects of macrophyte heterogeneity and food availability on structural parameters of the macroinvertebrate community in a Pampean stream (2011, methodology): “Fractal models are being increasingly used to describe many ecological phenomena including habitat heterogeneity, as they can deal with the scaledependence associated to ecological patterns and processes in a relatively simple manner (Gee & Warwick, 1994; Halley et al., 2004).”
Lévy trajectories of Peruvian purse-seiners as an indicator of the spatial distribution of anchovy ( Engraulis ringens ) (2005, methodology): “Choosing the fractal dimension as a natural and simple method for describing objects across a range of scales (Kotliar and Wiens, 1990; Sugihara and May, 1990; Halley et al., 2004), Russel et al.”
Quantifying habitat structure: surface convolution and living space for species in complex environments (2008, background): “Many natural objects have irregular surfaces and cannot be sufficiently described by simple geometry (Sugihara and May 1990, Halley et al. 2004).”
Predator-free space, functional responses and biological invasions (2015, background): “In contrast, although fractals have many applications in ecology (Sugihara & May 1990) they are often inappropriately applied (Halley et al. 2004) and offer no mechanistic insight into why interactions are mediated by structural complexity.”
Estimators of Fractal Dimension: Assessing the Roughness of Time Series and Spatial Data (2011, background): “In practice, measurements can only be taken at a finite range of scales, and usable estimates of the fractal dimension depend on the availability of observations at sufficiently fine temporal or spatial resolution (Malcai et al., 1997; Halley et al., 2004).”
Ecological Models and Data in R (2008, background): “, 2006a); or properties of landscapes with fractal geometry (Halley et al., 2004); or species-area curves (Tjørve, 2003).”
Indices of movement behaviour: conceptual background, effects of scale and location errors (2010, background): “The use of fractals in Ecology has been questioned, especially regarding the assumption of auto-similarity among scales, considered as a required condition for characterizing a fractal (TURCHIN 1996, HALLEY et al. 2004).”
Creating complex habitats for restoration and reconciliation (2015, neutral): “This is why adopting scale-dependent measures of complexity, such as fractal dimensions (D), can be potentially misleading (Pennycuick, 1992; Halley et al., 2004).”
Measuring surface complexity in ecological studies (2005, background): “While fractal dimensions remain an important measure of environmental heterogeneity with links to ecological theory, there are serious issues with the derivation and interpretation of fractal dimensions (Russ 1994; Halley et al. 2004).”
Clustering Patterns of Urban Built-up Areas with Curves of Fractal Scaling Behaviour (2010, background): “Fractals have considerable potential for describing, measuring, analyzing, and modelling complex realities, whatever the field of application (ecology, physics, remote sensing, etc) (eg see Halley et al, 2004).”