The DOI matches its Crossref record; 46 of the 46 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Slow Recovery from Perturbations as a Generic Indicator of a Nearby Catastrophic Shift
Open accessAbstract
The size of the basin of attraction in ecosystems with alternative stable states is often referred to as "ecological resilience." Ecosystems with a low ecological resilience may easily be tipped into an alternative basin of attraction by a stochastic event. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to measure ecological resilience in practice. Here we show that the rate of recovery from small perturbations (sometimes called "engineering resilience") is a remarkably good indicator of ecological resilience. Such recovery rates decrease as a catastrophic regime shift is approached, a phenomenon known in physics as "critical slowing down." We demonstrate the robust occurrence of critical slowing down in six ecological models and outline a possible experimental approach to quantify differences in recovery rates. In all the models we analyzed, critical slowing down becomes apparent quite far from a threshold point, suggesting that it may indeed be of practical use as an early warning signal. Despite the fact that critical slowing down could also indicate other critical transitions, such as a stable system becoming oscillatory, the robustness of the phenomenon makes it a promising indicator of loss of resilience and the risk of upcoming regime shifts in a system.
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Cites
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Self-citationNonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering
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Cited by
Early-warning signals for critical transitions
Scheffer, M., Bascompte, J., Brock, W. A., Brovkin, V., Carpenter, S. R., Dakos, V., Held, H., van Nes, E. H., Rietkerk, M., & Sugihara, G. (2009) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature08227 · Cited by 4,854
Self-citationAnticipating Critical Transitions
Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S. R., Lenton, T. M., Bascompte, J., Brock, W., Dakos, V., van de Koppel, J., van de Leemput, I. A., Levin, S. A., van Nes, E. H., et al. (2012) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1225244 · Cited by 2,208
Self-citationInsights into the resistance and resilience of the soil microbial community
Griffiths, B. S., & Philippot, L. (2013) · FEMS Microbiology Reviews · doi:10.1111/j.1574-6976.2012.00343.x · Cited by 1,117
Ecological thresholds and regime shifts: approaches to identification
Andersen, T., Carstensen, J., Hernández-García, E., & Duarte, C. M. (2009) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2008.07.014 · Cited by 786
Critical slowing down as early warning for the onset and termination of depression
van de Leemput, I. A., Wichers, M., Cramer, A. O. J., Borsboom, D., Tuerlinckx, F., Kuppens, P., van Nes, E. H., Viechtbauer, W., Giltay, E. J., Aggen, S. H., et al. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1312114110 · Cited by 771
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Metadata
- Authors
- van Nes, E. H., & Scheffer, M.
- Venue
- The American Naturalist
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2007-06
- Volume
- 169
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 738-747
- ISSN
- 0003-0147 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5323
- OpenAlex
- W1994224908
- Cited by
- 536
- References
- 46
- FWCI
- 15.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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