Skip to main content

Conceptual Framework

Core concepts underlying the SELES modelling framework: the landscape event paradigm, spatio-temporal state spaces, and the discrete event simulation engine.

1· The SELES Paradigm

SELES is built on a core idea: landscape change arises from feedback between the current state of a system and the processes that act upon it.

2· SELES Overview

SELES facilitates the specification and execution of landscape simulation models. It is not a landscape model itself, but rather a tool to build models — for example, the SELES Spatial Timber Supply Model (STSM).

3· Spatio-Temporal State Space

A spatio-temporal state space (or simply, state space) is the set of all spatial and non-spatial variables and constants — including their ranges of values and spatial bounds — combined with a time unit.

4· Landscape Events

Landscape events are the primary abstraction in SELES for modelling processes of landscape change. A landscape event is designed to represent any process that recurrently initiates on a landscape, possibly spreads (in contiguous or non-contiguous patches), and makes changes in the spatio-temporal contexts it visits.