Relation between stability and resilience determines the performance of early warning signals under different environmental drivers

Dai, Lei; Korolev, Kirill S.; Gore, Jeff

doi:10.1073/pnas.1418415112

Cited by 74 publications

(82 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…) and there is some theoretical insight into why they occur (Harrison ; Loreau ; Dai et al . ). Their existence has profound implications for policymakers and practitioners, necessitating decisions on which aspects of stability to prioritise for different management goals.…”

Section: Solutions and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Navigating the complexity of ecological stability

et al. 2016

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Human actions challenge nature in many ways. Ecological responses are ineluctably complex, demanding measures that describe them succinctly. Collectively, these measures encapsulate the overall 'stability' of the system. Many international bodies, including the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, broadly aspire to maintain or enhance ecological stability. Such bodies frequently use terms pertaining to stability that lack clear definition. Consequently, we cannot measure them and so they disconnect from a large body of theoretical and empirical understanding. We assess the scientific and policy literature and show that this disconnect is one consequence of an inconsistent and one-dimensional approach that ecologists have taken to both disturbances and stability. This has led to confused communication of the nature of stability and the level of our insight into it. Disturbances and stability are multidimensional. Our understanding of them is not. We have a remarkably poor understanding of the impacts on stability of the characteristics that define many, perhaps all, of the most important elements of global change. We provide recommendations for theoreticians, empiricists and policymakers on how to better integrate the multidimensional nature of ecological stability into their research, policies and actions.

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Section: Solutions and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Navigating the complexity of ecological stability

et al. 2016

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“…As a system approaches the critical threshold, longer time is required for a return to the initial state (i.e., recovery time increases). If the threshold is crossed, recovery time tends to infinite (i.e., the system does not return to its initial state; Dai et al, ; Veraart et al, ). Therefore, in homeoretic systems (Figure c) longer recovery times would be expected for systems subjected to lower initial MAP reductions (recovery time 1 > 2 > 3 > 4), whereas in bistable systems (Figure d) recovery times for plots subjected to initial MAP below MAP crit2 would tend to infinite.…”

Section: Assessing Resilience In Bistable Grasslandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, the recovery time is another indicator of resilience (Dai, Korolev, & Gore, 2015). As a system approaches the critical threshold, longer time is required for a return to the initial state (i.e., recovery time increases).…”

Section: A Ss E Ss Ing Re S Ilien Ce In B Is Tab Le G R a Ss L Andsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical transitions in rainfall manipulation experiments on grasslands

Matos

Flores

Hirota

et al. 2020

Ecology and Evolution

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As a result of climate and land‐use changes, grasslands have been subjected to intensifying drought regimes. Extreme droughts could interfere in the positive feedbacks between grasses and soil water content, pushing grasslands across critical thresholds of productivity and leading them to collapse. If this happens, systems may show hysteresis and costly management interventions might be necessary to restore predrought productivity. Thus, neglecting critical transitions may lead to mismanagement of grasslands and to irreversible loss of ecosystem services. Rainfall manipulation experiments constitute a powerful approach to investigate the risk of such critical transitions. However, experiments performed to date have rarely applied extreme droughts and have used resilience indices that disregard the existence of hysteresis. Here, we suggest how to incorporate critical transitions when designing rainfall manipulation experiments on grasslands and when measuring their resilience to drought. The ideas presented here have the potential to trigger a perspective shift among experimental researchers, into a new state where the existence of critical transitions will be discussed, experimentally tested, and largely considered when assessing and managing vegetation resilience to global changes.

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“…; Dai et al . ) through early warning signals (e.g., coefficient of variation, temporal autocorrelation), which usually manifest the variability of a system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dimensionality of stability depends on disturbance type

et al. 2019

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Ecosystems respond in various ways to disturbances. Quantifying ecological stability therefore requires inspecting multiple stability properties, such as resistance, recovery, persistence and invariability. Correlations among these properties can reduce the dimensionality of stability, simplifying the study of environmental effects on ecosystems. A key question is how the kind of disturbance affects these correlations. We here investigated the effect of three disturbance types (random, species‐specific, local) applied at four intensity levels, on the dimensionality of stability at the population and community level. We used previously parameterized models that represent five natural communities, varying in species richness and the number of trophic levels. We found that disturbance type but not intensity affected the dimensionality of stability and only at the population level. The dimensionality of stability also varied greatly among species and communities. Therefore, studying stability cannot be simplified to using a single metric and multi‐dimensional assessments are still to be recommended.

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Relation between stability and resilience determines the performance of early warning signals under different environmental drivers

Cited by 74 publications

References 56 publications

Navigating the complexity of ecological stability

Navigating the complexity of ecological stability

Critical transitions in rainfall manipulation experiments on grasslands

The dimensionality of stability depends on disturbance type

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