NIMBioS Postdoc’s Innovative Modeling Wins First Prize

Jiang Jiang
NIMBioS Postdoctoral Fellow

Congratulations to NIMBioS Postdoctoral Fellow Jiang Jiang for winning first prize in the MCED Award for Innovative Contributions to Ecological Modelling competition for his mathematical model used to understand coastal vegetation changes in storm surges.

MCED, which stands for Modelling Complex Ecological Dynamics, is a textbook presenting an overview in approaches and applications in ecological modeling. The textbook editors organize the annual award as a part of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ)  awards. The intention of the MCED award, which is given to young modelers who have finished their degree within the last three years, is to foster the development and application of modern ecological modeling methods that can help to expand the understanding of complex ecological dynamics.

According to the MCED web site, the competition drew “a high number of excellent applications from all from over the world. The jury consisting of the book editors, representatives of the Young Modellers and the President of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ)  had a hard time evaluating the applications according to novelty of the approach, contribution to ecology and ecological theory and bridging the gap between science and application.”

For Jiang’s winning project, “Modelling the emergence of self-stabilising sharp boundaries in ecotones of coastal marshland communities,” Jiang developed a model that coupled vegetation dynamics with hydrology and salinity to study factors that might affect vegetation in low-lying coastal areas.

Work related to his award-winning entry has appeared in two of Jiang’s published papers —

• Jiang J, DeAngelis DL, Smith TJ, Teh SY, Koh HL. 2012.  Spatial pattern formation of coastal vegetation in response to hydrodynamics of soil pore water salinity:  A model study. Landscape Ecology 27:109-119. [Online]
• Jiang J, Gao D, DeAngelis DL. 2012. Towards a theory of ecotone resilience:  Coastal vegetation on a salinity gradient.  Theoretical Population Biology 82:29-37. [Online]