Search for a command to run...
this paper, such as the global distribution of radiative energy in the tree crowns, which affects the amount of light reaching the leaves and the local temperature of plant organs. The presented framework itself is also open to further research. To begin, the precise functional specification of the environment, implied by the design of the modeling framework, is suitable for a formal analysis of algorithms that capture various environmental processes. This analysis may highlight tradeoffs between time, memory, and communication complexity, and lead to programs matching the needs of the model to available system resources in an optimal manner. A deeper understanding of the spectrum of processes taking place in the environment may lead to the design of a mini-language for environment specification. Analogous to the language of L-systems for plant specification, this mini-language would simplify the modeling of various environments, relieving the modeler from the burden of low-level programming in a general-purpose language. Fleischer and Barr's work on the specification of environments supporting collisions and reaction-diffusion processes [20] is an inspiring step in this direction. Complexity issues are not limited to the environment, but also arise in plant models. They become particularly relevant as the scope of modeling increases from individual plants to groups of plants and, eventually, entire plant communities. This raises the problem of selecting the proper level of abstraction for designing plant models, including careful selection of physiological processes incorporated into the model and the spatial resolution of the resulting structures. The complexity of the modeling task can be also addressed at the level of system design, by assigning various components o...