Thermodynamic limit from small lattices of coupled maps

We compare the behaviour of a small truncated coupled map lattice with random inputs at the boundaries with that of a large deterministic lattice essentially at the thermodynamic limit. We find exponential convergence for the probability density, predictability, power spectrum, and two-point correlation with increasing truncated lattice size. This suggests that spatio-temporal embedding techniques using local observations cannot detect the presence of spatial extent in such systems and hence they may equally well be modelled by a local low dimensional stochastically driven system.