Forest dynamics with canopy gap expansion and stochastic Ising model

Importance of the influence of neighboring canopy gaps upon new gap creation has been clarified by the ecological study of a neotropical forest on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama. A stochastic lattice model for the forest dynamics with interacting canopy gap expansion was introduced by Kubo et al. We give a theorem showing a condition that this model can be regarded as a stochastic Ising model, and that its stationary state is exactly given by a Gibbs state. Using this theorem, we obtain a Gibbs state which remarkably well approximates the real gap-size distribution in BCI.