Slow recovery from perturbations as a generic indicator of a nearby catastrophic shift
Slow recovery from perturbations as a generic indicator of a nearby catastrophic shift
复制标题
DOI：
10.1086/516845
复制
发表时间：
2007-06-01
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Scheffer, Marten
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
van Nes, Egbert H.;Scheffer, Marten
在具有替代稳定状态的生态系统中，吸引流域的大小通常被称为“生态复原力”。“生态恢复力低的生态系统很容易被随机事件倾倒到另一个吸引力盆地。不幸的是，在实践中很难衡量生态恢复力。在这里，我们表明，从小扰动（有时称为“工程弹性”）的恢复率是一个非常好的生态弹性指标。当接近灾难性的状态转变时，这种恢复率会降低，这种现象在物理学中被称为“临界减速"。“我们在六个生态模型中证明了临界减速的稳健发生，并概述了一种可能的实验方法来量化恢复率的差异。在我们分析的所有模型中，临界减速在距离阈值点相当远的地方变得明显，这表明它确实可以作为早期预警信号。尽管临界减速也可能表明其他临界转变，例如稳定系统变得振荡，但这种现象的鲁棒性使其成为系统丧失弹性和即将到来的政权转变风险的有希望的指标。
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.