Resilience and regime shifts in a marine biodiversity hotspot.

ABSTRACT: Complex natural systems, spanning from individuals and populations to ecosystems and social-ecological systems, often exhibit abrupt reorganizations in response to changing stressors, known as regime shifts or critical transitions. Theory suggests that such systems feature folded stability landscapes with fluctuating resilience, fold-bifurcations, and alternate basins of attraction. However, the implementation of such features to elucidate response mechanisms in an empirical context is scarce, due to the lack of generic approaches to quantify resilience dynamics in individual natural systems. Here, we introduce an Integrated Resilience Assessment (IRA) framework: a three-step analytical process to assess resilience and construct stability landscapes of empirical systems. The proposed frame

SUBMITTER: Vasilakopoulos P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5651905 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature