Figure 2.

Schematic of coupled species models, interacting to produce an ecosystem model. The basic structure is a layered series of dynamic models: the vegetation model feeds location-specific parameters into herbivore models to give, for example, food supply; the herbivore layer then feeds into the carnivore layer in a comparable fashion. This is shown for a single herbivore but could in theory be conducted separately for all herbivores, and similar abstractions could be conducted for models in other layers. The three-dimensional vegetation map was produced by the Environmental Change Network, and represents the Moor House NNR in the Pennines (UK) [56].