Numerous studies have shown self-organization to give rise to regular patterning in a variety of systems. Does self-organization also play a role in seemingly non-regular landscapes, which occur in the majority of landscapes surrounding us? Research has already suggested that identical spatial structures, when generated by different kinds drivers (physical template, self-organization, stochasticity), respond to environmental perturbation differently.

Local interactions among ecological agents can give rise to regular spatial patterning across a large spatial extent, such as in the case of sand dunes, regular patterned vegetation (e.g., in tiger stripes, labyrinth, spots) in semi-arid ecosystems, and fairy circles in Namibia and Australia). In South Florida, wetlands form various types of regular patterning: regularly patterned ridge-slough patterning, tree islands, evenly-spaced cypress domes, and stringed cypress depressions on near-surface limestone bedrock.

The evolution of life is inextricably linked to the evolution of Earth surface morphology (geomorphology), yet feedbacks between these two “evolutions” and the consequences of coupling between them are still poorly understood. Biological organisms undergo adaptive evolutionary changes by natural selection, coupled with landscape evolution, which follows an entirely different set of laws (although the same word ‘evolution’ is used). The coupling between landscape evolution and biological evolution occurs over a wide spectrum of temporal and spatial scales and in almost all ecosystems.