Evaluating early-warning indicators of critical transitions in natural aquatic ecosystems

quantifying resilience in ecology and evolution under global environmental change

Evaluating early-warning indicators of critical transitions in natural aquatic ecosystems

November 28, 2016 latest news 0

pnas-2016-gsell-1608242113We just published a study on signatures of instability in empirical time series from five freshwater ecosystems with documented sudden, persistent transitions hypothesized to represent critical transitions. We detected strong variation in early warning indicators, and a low agreement between the four indicators we tested. We conclude that the applicability of these tools was strongly limited by the requirement for ecosystem-specific knowledge of transition-generating mechanisms and their drivers to choose relevant state variables for analysis, especially in monitored systems that are not explicitly designed for estimating this type of indicators.