Prolonged instability prior to a regime shift

Spanbauer, Trisha L., Allen, Craig R., Angeler, David G., Eason, Tarsha, Fritz, Sherilyn C., Garmestani, Ahjond S., Nash, Kirsty, and Stone, Jeffery R. (2014) Prolonged instability prior to a regime shift. PLoS ONE, 9 (10). e108936. pp. 1-7.

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Abstract

Regime shifts are generally defined as the point of 'abrupt' change in the state of a system. However, a seemingly abrupt transition can be the product of a system reorganization that has been ongoing much longer than is evident in statistical analysis of a single component of the system. Using both univariate and multivariate statistical methods, we tested a long-term high-resolution paleoecological dataset with a known change in species assemblage for a regime shift. Analysis of this dataset with Fisher Information and multivariate time series modeling showed that there was a, 2000 year period of instability prior to the regime shift. This period of instability and the subsequent regime shift coincide with regional climate change, indicating that the system is undergoing extrinsic forcing. Paleoecological records offer a unique opportunity to test tools for the detection of thresholds and stable-states, and thus to examine the long-term stability of ecosystems over periods of multiple millennia.

Item ID: 36097
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1932-6203
Additional Information:

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

Funders: August T. Larsson Foundation of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, National Science Foundation (NSF)
Projects and Grants: NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program NSF #0903469, NSF Sedimentary Geology & Paleobiology program NSF #1251678
Date Deposited: 12 Nov 2014 12:27
FoR Codes: 06 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 0602 Ecology > 060206 Palaeoecology @ 70%
05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0501 Ecological Applications > 050102 Ecosystem Function @ 30%
SEO Codes: 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9608 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity > 960807 Fresh, Ground and Surface Water Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity @ 100%
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