Multifractals for ecological spatial data

Presentation given on IMCOAST (Impact of climate induced glacial melting on marine coastal systems in the Western Antarctic Peninsula region) workshop held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, april 2012. Abstract: Multifractal theory can be used as a method specially suitable to analyze ecological spatial data. Density distributions or individual distributions of one or several species can be characterized using this kind of analysis. Data that are very difficult to characterize with averages due to its very irregular nature or due to its non-stationarity can be analyzed using this techniques. Comparisons against null models can be done using randomization procedures and the existence of different underlying processes can be hypothesized. An open source software package was developed to perform this analysis.