THE ORGANIZATIONAL ORDER OF VEGETATION AND ITS GLOBAL PATTERN
植被的组织有序度及其全球格局

Vegetation pattern in nature is diverse, spectacular, and ever-changing. It is the macroscopic manifestation of biological diversity and the display of ecological order in space and time. How does this overwhelmingly diverse and wonderfully ordered pattern arise and evolve? To answer this question, traditional methods are based on mostly on vegetation classification, emphasizing the inductive approach. In recent decades, though ecologists have attempted to identify environmental factors and mechanisms that responsible for vegetation formation and distribution, a general deductive theory that can quantitatively predict large-scale vegetation pattern is still lacking. In this paper, based on statistical thermodynamics and empirical evidence in modern vegetation science we have deduced two general equations of the organizational order of vegetation (OOV). By analyzing the mathematical properties and ecological meanings of the statistical thermodynamic equations, some interesting general properties of vegetation patterns become apparent. Also we used the statistical thermodynamic model to calculate OOV values for major world biomes and infer global vegetation gradients. The results of a series of analyses with the model show the predicted pattern of the world biome types is consistent with that empirical observation proposed by Robert H. Whittaker. This paper demonstrates that, the model and its associated corollaries may enhance our understanding of the formation and dynamics of vegetation pattern on large spatial scales.