Early warning of critical transitions in nature and society
by
Steven Lade(Stockholm Resilience Centre, SU)
→
Europe/Stockholm
Description
A wide variety of systems in nature and society -– including fisheries,
coral reefs, productive farmland, planetary climate, neural activity in
the brain, and financial markets -– are known to be susceptible to sudden
changes leading to drastic re-organization or collapse. A variety of
signals based on statistics of time-series data have been proposed that
could provide generic warning signals for these so-called critical
transitions.
In this talk, I will propose a new method for calculating early warning
signals that is complementary to existing approaches. The key step is to
incorporate other available expert knowledge through the framework of a
so-called generalised model. The eigenvalues of the generalised model then
constitute the early warning signal. The new approach will be demonstrated
through application to three ecological examples, including the simulated
collapse of a fishery.
