The Field of Neighbourhood (FON) -ein phänomenologischer Modellansatz zur Beschreibung von Nachbarschaftsbeziehungen sessiler Organismen

In classical theoretical ecology, there are numerous standard models which are simple, generally applicable, and have well-know properties. These standard models are widely used as building blocks of all kinds of theoretical and applied models. In contrast, there are so far no standard individual-based models (IBMs), but they are badly needed to use the advantages of the individual-based approach more efficiently. In this thesis the field-of-neighborhood (FON) approach is developed as a possible standard for modeling plant populations. In this approach, a plant is characterized by a circular zone of influence which grows with the plant, and a field of neighborhood that for each point within the zone of influence describes the strength of competition, i.e. growth reduction, on neighboring plants. Local competition is thus described phenomenologically. Being firstly developed as the underlying competition model for the mangrove simulation model KiWi, the field of neighborhood approach shows the potential to describe local competition for various plant species and for sessile organisms in general.