As part of this effort, ecologists have noted that nature does not seem to operate in a seamless web, which would require a full understanding of processes at all levels in order to explain and predict the outcomes of natural processes. Many processes produce clusters of entities, generated by a small set of self-organizing processes. Along the same transect, measurements were taken at different intervalsand yielded different patterns. Based on discussions found in O'Neill et al. A sample of a forest landscape model composed of a matrix of sites.
Fire organizes and maintains the landscape as a mosaic of patches composed of even-aged sites.
The sites making up the landscape are each shaded by age. Young sites are lightly shaded while old sites are black. At the right of the figure the ages, in years, of a set of sites are shown. Holling et al. The central idea of hierarchy theory is that to understand any complex system depends on understanding the constraints present at the higher and lower levels of spatial-temporal resolution.