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An extension of classical irreversible thermodynamics pioneered by Ilya Prigogine is developed, in which fluctuations of macroscopic observables accounting for microscopic-scale processes are incorporated. The contribution of the fluctuations to the entropy production is derived from a generalized entropy balance equation and expressed in terms of the fluctuating variables, via an extended local equilibrium Ansatz and in terms of the probability distributions of these variables. The approach is illustrated on reactive systems involving linear and nonlinear steps, and the role of the distance from equilibrium and of the nonlinearities is assessed.

In this work, we reconstruct and analyze the micrometeorological dynamics of the transitional forest located south of the Amazon basin. For this, we use time series of micrometeorological variables collected over five years in the transitional forest of Mato Grosso (Brazil). We employ local feature analysis, a recently proposed extension of principal component analysis, to extract the most relevant physical variables from this set. We show in this way that temperature records contain most of the dynamical information in all seasons. Based on this result, the dimensionality of the space spanned by the system's dynamics and the properties of the so defined attractors are obtained. In the dry season, the system presents a robust oscillatory character described by a well-defined limit cycle. In the wet season, the dynamics becomes more irregular but can still be seen as a periodic behavior affected by external noise. These results can help to develop accurate models for the meteorology of the Amazonian transitional forest and can thus lead to a better understanding of this important ecosystem.

In this paper, we show that the Gray-Scott model is able to produce defect-mediated turbulence. This regime emerges from the limit cycle, close or far from the Hopf bifurcation, but always right before the Andronov homoclinic bifurcation of the homogeneous system. After this bifurcation, as the control parameter is further changed, the system starts visiting more and more frequently the stable node of the model. Consequently, the defect-mediated turbulence gradually turns into spatiotemporal intermittency.

This paper studies the spatiotemporal dynamics of a reaction-diffusion-advection system corresponding to an extension of the Oregonator model, which includes two inhibitors instead of one. We show that when the reaction-diffusion, two-dimensional problem displays stationary patterns the addition of a plug flow can induce the emergence of new types of stationary structures. These patterns take the form of spots or arcs, the size and the spacing of which can be controlled by the flow.