This book provides a simplified description of the procedures to be used to perform an analysis of hydrological data within a multifractal framework. After a review of multifractal theory and the presentation of one model for identifying scale invariance properties, examples of applications to rainfall and discharge time series are given. It will be of interest to teachers and researchers in this field, both nationally and abroad.

This book introduces stochastic dynamical systems theory in order to synthesize our current knowledge of climate variability. Nonlinear processes, such as advection, radiation and turbulent mixing, play a central role in climate variability. These processes can give rise to transition phenomena, associated with tipping or bifurcation points, once external conditions are changed. The theory of dynamical systems provides a systematic way to study these transition phenomena. Its stochastic ex...

Mathematical Modelling in One Dimension demonstrates the universality of mathematical techniques through a wide variety of applications. Learn how the same mathematical idea governs loan repayments, drug accumulation in tissues or growth of a population, or how the same argument can be used to find the trajectory of a dog pursuing a hare, the trajectory of a self-guided missile or the shape of a satellite dish. The author places equal importance on difference and differential equations, sh...

The book describes and discusses the numerical methods which are successfully being used for analysing ecological data, using a clear and comprehensive approach. These methods are derived from the fields of mathematical physics, parametric and nonparametric statistics, information theory, numerical taxonomy, archaeology, psychometry, sociometry, econometry and others. - An updated, 3rd English edition of the most widely cited book on quantitative analysis of multivariate ecological data - ...

This pioneering graduate textbook provides readers with the concepts and practical tools required to understand the maximum entropy principle, and apply it to an understanding of ecological patterns. Rather than building and combining mechanistic models of ecosystems, the approach is grounded in information theory and the logic of inference. Paralleling the derivation of thermodynamics from the maximum entropy principle, the state variable theory of ecology developed in this book predicts ...

Dispersal of plants and animals is one of the most fascinating subjects in ecology. It has long been recognized as an important factor affecting ecosystem dynamics. Dispersal is apparently a phenomenon of biological origin; however, because of its complexity, it cannot be studied comprehensively by biological methods alone. Deeper insights into dispersal properties and implications require interdisciplinary approaches involving biologists, ecologists and mathematicians. The purpose of this...

This undergraduate text explores a variety of large-scale phenomena - global warming, ice ages, water, poverty - and uses these case studies as a motivation to explore nonlinear dynamics, power-law statistics, and complex systems. Although the detailed mathematical descriptions of these topics can be challenging, the consequences of a system being nonlinear, power-law, or complex are in fact quite accessible. This book blends a tutorial approach to the mathematical aspects of complex syste...

This book presents the fundamental theory for non-standard diffusion problems in movement ecology. Lévy processes and anomalous diffusion have shown to be both powerful and useful tools for qualitatively and quantitatively describing a wide variety of spatial population ecological phenomena and dynamics, such as invasion fronts and search strategies.Adopting a self-contained, textbook-style approach, the authors provide the elements of statistical physics and stochastic processes o...

In this thesis, quantum estimation theory is applied to investigate uncertainty relations between error and disturbance in quantum measurement. The author argues that the best solution for clarifying the attainable bound of the error and disturbance is to invoke the estimation process from the measurement outcomes such as signals from a photodetector in a quantum optical system. The error and disturbance in terms of the Fisher information content have been successfully formulated and provi...

This book deals in a modern manner with a family of named problems from an old and mature subject, classical elasticity. These problems are formulated over either a half or the whole of a linearly elastic and isotropic two- or three-dimensional space, subject to loads concentrated at points or lines. The discussion of each problem begins with a careful examination of the prevailing symmetries, and proceeds with inverting the canonical order, in that it moves from a search for balanced stre...

This textbook presents a modern account of turbulence, one of the greatest challenges in physics. The state-of-the-art is put into historical perspective five centuries after the first studies of Leonardo and half a century after the first attempt by A. N. Kolmogorov to predict the properties of flow at very high Reynolds numbers. Such 'fully developed turbulence' is ubiquitous in both cosmical and natural environments, in engineering applications and in everyday life. The intended readers...

The contributions to this volume attempt to apply different aspects of Ilya Prigogine's Nobel-prize-winning work on dissipative structures to nonchemical systems as a way of linking the natural and social sciences. They address both the mathematical methods for description of pattern and form as they evolve in biological systems and the mechanisms of the evolution of social systems, containing many variables responding to subjective, qualitative stimuli.The mathematical modeling of...