Estimating the ecotone width in patchy ecotones using a sigmoid wave approach

Ecotones are zones of transition between two adjacent ecological systems and are characterized by a high rate of change compared to these adjacent areas. They are dynamic entities with both a spatial and temporal property, reflected in an ecotone width and location, which vary across time during succession or environmental change on both a local or global scale. Various techniques have been proposed to characterize ecotones, one of them being a sigmoid wave curve fit on the transects across the ecotone. In this paper, we test the robustness of a sigmoid wave model approach on simulated ecotone data with a varying degree of steepness, patchiness and transect length. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) provided us details on the sensitivity of the estimated ecotone width for the steepness, the transect length as well as for the patchiness of the ecotone. The statistics also allowed us to investigate the interaction between the different parameters on the resulting ecotone width. We conclude that the sigmoid wave curve-fitting algorithm provides a robust way to describe ecotones with various degrees of steepness and patchiness. Depending on the transect window size used, a sigmoid wave curve-fitting algorithm will pick up variations in ecotone steepness or in ecotone steepness and patchiness.