Kefi, Sonia and Guttal, Vishwesha and Brock, William A and Carpenter, Stephen R and Ellison, Aaron M and Livina, Valerie N and Seekell, David A and Scheffer, Marten and van Nes, Egbert H and Dakos, Vasilis (2014) Early Warning Signals of Ecological Transitions: Methods for Spatial Patterns. In: PLOS ONE, 9 (3).
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Abstract
A number of ecosystems can exhibit abrupt shifts between alternative stable states. Because of their important ecological and economic consequences, recent research has focused on devising early warning signals for anticipating such abrupt ecological transitions. In particular, theoretical studies show that changes in spatial characteristics of the system could provide early warnings of approaching transitions. However, the empirical validation of these indicators lag behind their theoretical developments. Here, we summarize a range of currently available spatial early warning signals, suggest potential null models to interpret their trends, and apply them to three simulated spatial data sets of systems undergoing an abrupt transition. In addition to providing a step-by-step methodology for applying these signals to spatial data sets, we propose a statistical toolbox that may be used to help detect approaching transitions in a wide range of spatial data. We hope that our methodology together with the computer codes will stimulate the application and testing of spatial early warning signals on real spatial data.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | PLOS ONE |
| Publisher: | PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE |
| Additional Information: | Copyright for this article belongs to the authors. |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Jun 2014 07:48 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Jun 2014 07:50 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/49041 |
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