Prolonged instability prior to a regime shift

Trisha L. Spanbauer, Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Tarsha Eason, Sherilyn C. Fritz, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Kirsty L. Nash, Jeffery R. Stone

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

60 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere108936
JournalPloS one
Volume9
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2014

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Public Library of Science. All rights reserved. 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.

Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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