  We develop and analyze a simple cellular automaton (CA) model that reproduces
the main properties of the evolution of soft X-ray coronal loops. We are
motivated by the observation that these loops evolve in three distinguishable
phases that suggest the development, maintainance, and decay of a
self-organized system. The model is based on the idea that loops are made of
elemental strands that are heated by the relaxation of magnetic stress in the
form of nanoflares. In this vision, usually called "the Parker conjecture"
(Parker 1988), the origin of stress is the displacement of the strand
footpoints due to photospheric convective motions. Modeling the response and
evolution of the plasma we obtain synthetic light curves that have the same
characteristic properties (intensity, fluctuations, and timescales) as the
observed cases. We study the dependence of these properties on the model
parameters and find scaling laws that can be used as observational predictions
of the model. We discuss the implications of our results for the interpretation
of recent loop observations in different wavelengths.
