Abstract
No curious person can look out over the valley of a river or stream without wondering at the obstinate refusal of the water to flow in a straight line from higher to lower ground, even when the terrain is gentle enough to allow it the opportunity. Instead, the river meanders, snake-like down the valley. This phenomenon is so counterintuitive that the nineteenth century sociologist Lester Ward offered it as an example of nature’s wastefulness of energy (see Worster, 1977, p. 175).
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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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DeAngelis, D.L., Post, W.M., Travis, C.C. (1986). Spatially Heterogeneous Ecosystems: Pattern Formation. In: Positive Feedback in Natural Systems. Biomathematics, vol 15. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-82625-2_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-82625-2_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-82627-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-82625-2
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