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Kelp Forest Light-Field Transect

Interactive 2D grid-field model of self-shading inside a kelp forest transect: a rasterised canopy-density field integrates Beer-Lambert attenuation top-down at every column, driving the same light-compensation growth and self-thinning dynamics as the 3D canopy model, computed by an independent grid method.

Ecology & Conservation Biology2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

A line of kelp stipes grows toward the sea surface along a 2D transect. Each stipe's canopy area is rasterised onto a height-by-position grid, and the light reaching any cell is the exact top-down cumulative sum of canopy area above it, run through the same Beer-Lambert exponential attenuation used in forest-canopy light models. Shaded stipes running a light deficit against a fixed respiration cost die back once they've spent too long below their light-compensation point, freeing a gap for a fresh recruit. Adjust stand density, the canopy's extinction coefficient and the surface irradiance to watch the transect self-thin into a dominant canopy layer over a shaded understory — the grid-field method giving the identical qualitative dynamics as the 3D pairwise-overlap model through a completely independent computation.

⚙ Under the hood

2D grid-field model of self-shading along a kelp forest transect: canopy area is rasterised onto a height-by-position grid and integrated top-down through the Beer-Lambert law, driving the same light-compensation growth and self-thinning dynamics as the 3D canopy model, computed by a completely independent method.

kelp forestcanopylight competitionself-thinningBeer-Lambert lawlight fieldecology

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install