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The model description

We suppose the climate of our world is determined by the temperature T(x,t) only, and the dynamics is described by the equation
 equation25
where tex2html_wrap_inline797 is the world ``area'', A is the albedo of planet surface at a given point x, tex2html_wrap_inline803 is the solar constant, so that the term tex2html_wrap_inline805 is the insolation, and the term tex2html_wrap_inline807 (where tex2html_wrap_inline809 is the Stephan-Boltzmann constant) is the erradiation. The latters can be presented in the Budyko's form [5] also: a+bT, but it is not principally. The Budyko form together with the empirical constants a,b would give us a better agreement with the real radiation data of the earth. For a review of the so-called energy-balance models see, e.g., [6]. Let us rewrite eq.(1) in the form:
 equation41
Further we suppose that the planet surface can be covered by the vegetation with the density N(x,t), its dynamics is described by a logistic equation:
 equation52
where tex2html_wrap_inline817 is the Malthusian parameter [7] of the growth function.

Now we formulate two hypotheses, which are the description of feedbacks between the climate and vegetation of our world.
hypothese60

  figure61
Figure 1: Albedo A as a function of vegetation density N according to hypothesis 1. tex2html_wrap_inline831 is the albedo of the naked surface, tex2html_wrap_inline833 of surface fully covered by vegetation.

Then the function tex2html_wrap_inline835 will be the following (see Fig. 2). Obviously that tex2html_wrap_inline837.

  figure67
Figure 2: The function tex2html_wrap_inline839 in (2).

We assume tex2html_wrap_inline841 for any N>0.
hypothese76

  figure77
Figure 3: The Malthusian growth function tex2html_wrap_inline853 according to hypothesis 2.

Obviously that tex2html_wrap_inline855 if tex2html_wrap_inline857, and tex2html_wrap_inline859 if tex2html_wrap_inline861, tex2html_wrap_inline863 if tex2html_wrap_inline865.

On the ecological point of view, the tex2html_wrap_inline853 describes the ecological niche, defined as the interval of T with tex2html_wrap_inline871, for vegetation in the space of climatic factors.

And finally, the equations (2) and (3) together with the functions A(N) and tex2html_wrap_inline853 and the corresponding initial and boundary conditions make up the biosphere for our world.


next up previous
Next: Preliminary analysis: uniform biosphere Up: A minimal model of Previous: Introduction

Werner von Bloh (Data & Computation)
Thu Jul 13 15:02:47 MEST 2000