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Entropy in Landscape Ecology III
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Entropy in Landscape Ecology III

A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Entropy and Biology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2023) | Viewed by 4992

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Samuel A. Cushman

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service, 2500 S. Pine Knoll Dr., Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA
Interests: landscape ecology; landscape genetics; forest ecology; climate change; wildlife ecology; disturbance ecology; population biology; landscape dynamic simulation modeling; landscape pattern analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Peichao Gao

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Interests: sustainable land use; geographic trade-offs; geographic complexity; spatial entropy as applied in landscapes and image analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the opening of the third installment of the Entropy Special Issue on “Entropy in Landscape Ecology”. This follows the successful completion of two previous issues on the topic, in which 14 papers were published and which have been highly impactful in rekindling interest and research in spatial entropy in the context of landscape ecology. We are opening a third issue to further encourage the rapid advance of research, theory, and methods in the analysis of spatial entropy in ecological systems. The first two installments of the Special Issue included many papers focused on the application of entropy measures to landscapes and the development, refinement, and evaluation of new measures. Recent attention has focused on the thermodynamic consistency, relevance, and rigor of spatial entropy measures, which we suggest should be a focus of papers in this new installment of the Special Issue. Specifically, along with papers on a broad range of applications of spatial entropy to landscape ecology, we particularly encourage those that investigate thermodynamic linkages between entropy measures, information, landscape structure, complexity, dissipative structures, exergy, enthalpy, free energy, and ecosystem energetics. We encourage you to submit papers to the issue and look forward to working with you on this exciting topic.

Dr. Samuel A. Cushman
Dr. Peichao Gao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • landscape
  • entropy
  • dissipative structures
  • pattern
  • complexity

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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23 pages, 4931 KiB  
Article
Investigating a Method for a Horizontal Comprehensive Eco-Compensation Standard of Interregional Ecological Regulating Services
by Yejing Zhou, Jingxuan Zhou, Meng Xia and Le Zhang
Entropy 2023, 25(9), 1319; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25091319 - 09 Sep 2023
Viewed by 650
Abstract
Horizontal eco-compensation lacks effective solutions for implementing comprehensive multifactor compensation and determining the compensation standard. To meet those needs, a method named entropy flat surface was proposed and put into practice. However, some scientific problems were found. More specifically, the measurement method of [...] Read more.
Horizontal eco-compensation lacks effective solutions for implementing comprehensive multifactor compensation and determining the compensation standard. To meet those needs, a method named entropy flat surface was proposed and put into practice. However, some scientific problems were found. More specifically, the measurement method of the ecological value was controversial, and the value diffusion model did not reflect the change in the value gradient caused by spatial distance, while the value diffusion had an unclear scope. Therefore, this work optimized and studied the entropy curved-surface method in the case of E’zhou City. The main goal was to build a value-surface model of ecological regulating services based on maximum entropy production. As far as a tangible normal distribution surface is concerned, the model was more consistent with the ecosystem’s energy flow characteristics. The external output of value could be precisely expressed by the dynamic and stable expansion state of the surface model. Therefore, the eco-compensation relations and results were clear. Theoretically, the E’Cheng and Huarong Districts should pay a total of 114 million CNY to the Liangzi Lake District. Our work provided a new perspective, in terms of finding a rule of the ecological regulating service values of the macro morphological structure, simulating the transmission and diffusion of multiple values in interregional areas, solving the calculation problem of the horizontal ecological comprehensive compensation standard, and clarifying the relations of compensation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Entropy in Landscape Ecology III)
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14 pages, 3794 KiB  
Article
Exploring Relationships between Boltzmann Entropy of Images and Building Classification Accuracy in Land Cover Mapping
by Zhipeng Li, Tian Lan, Zhilin Li and Peichao Gao
Entropy 2023, 25(8), 1182; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25081182 - 09 Aug 2023
Viewed by 743
Abstract
Remote sensing images are important data sources for land cover mapping. As one of the most important artificial features in remote sensing images, buildings play a critical role in many applications, such as population estimation and urban planning. Classifying buildings quickly and accurately [...] Read more.
Remote sensing images are important data sources for land cover mapping. As one of the most important artificial features in remote sensing images, buildings play a critical role in many applications, such as population estimation and urban planning. Classifying buildings quickly and accurately ensures the reliability of the above applications. It is known that the classification accuracy of buildings (usually indicated by a comprehensive index called F1) is greatly affected by image quality. However, how image quality affects building classification accuracy is still unclear. In this study, Boltzmann entropy (an index considering both compositional and configurational information, simply called BE) is employed to describe image quality, and the potential relationships between BE and F1 are explored based on images from two open-source building datasets (i.e., the WHU and Inria datasets) in three cities (i.e., Christchurch, Chicago and Austin). Experimental results show that (1) F1 fluctuates greatly in images where building proportions are small (especially in images with building proportions smaller than 1%) and (2) BE has a negative relationship with F1 (i.e., when BE becomes larger, F1 tends to become smaller). The negative relationships are confirmed using Spearman correlation coefficients (SCCs) and various confidence intervals via bootstrapping (i.e., a nonparametric statistical method). Such discoveries are helpful in deepening our understanding of how image quality affects building classification accuracy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Entropy in Landscape Ecology III)
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10 pages, 209 KiB  
Opinion
Entropy, Ecology and Evolution: Toward a Unified Philosophy of Biology
by Samuel A. Cushman
Entropy 2023, 25(3), 405; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25030405 - 23 Feb 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3183
Abstract
Darwin proposed that the capacity of organisms to produce more offspring that can be supported by the environment would lead to a struggle for existence, and individuals that are most fit for survival and reproduction would be selected through natural selection. Ecology is [...] Read more.
Darwin proposed that the capacity of organisms to produce more offspring that can be supported by the environment would lead to a struggle for existence, and individuals that are most fit for survival and reproduction would be selected through natural selection. Ecology is the science that studies the interaction between organisms and their environment within the context of Darwinian evolution, and an ecosystem is defined as a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system. One topic that has been very much understudied and largely ignored in evolutionary biology is the overarching context of thermodynamics in controlling all biological processes and the evolution of life. Most fundamentally, organisms are self-replicating dissipative structures. Evolution is the process whereby variation in the structure of organisms have differential fitness in terms of their effectiveness at building and maintaining their structure, efficiently consuming free energy, and effectively reproducing and passing on those heritable variations, leading to change in the frequency of genetic variation and associated change in the characteristics in the population. The central process is dissipation of free energy according to the second law of thermodynamics, and evolution therefore is better conceptualized as the emergence of self-replicating dissipative structures that through natural selection become increasingly more efficient at degrading free energy. Ecosystems are linked series of dissipative structures with heat engine dynamics driven by random dissipation of energy and increasing entropy. The structure and composition of ecosystems across scales are emergent dissipative structures driven by the flow of energy and the increase in entropy. Communities and ecosystems are emergent properties of a system that has evolved to most efficiently dissipate energy and increase entropy. By focusing on the fundamental entity (energy), and the fundamental process (dissipation and disordering of energy and increasing of entropy), we are able to have a much clearer and powerful understanding of what life is, from the level of biochemistry, to evolution, to the nature of the organism itself, and to the emergent structures of ecosystems, food webs and communities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Entropy in Landscape Ecology III)
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