IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pcbi00/1002360.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Early Warning Signals for Critical Transitions: A Generalized Modeling Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Steven J Lade
  • Thilo Gross

Abstract

Critical transitions are sudden, often irreversible, changes that can occur in a large variety of complex systems; signals that warn of critical transitions are therefore highly desirable. We propose a new method for early warning signals that integrates multiple sources of information and data about the system through the framework of a generalized model. We demonstrate our proposed approach through several examples, including a previously published fisheries model. We regard our method as complementary to existing early warning signals, taking an approach of intermediate complexity between model-free approaches and fully parameterized simulations. One potential advantage of our approach is that, under appropriate conditions, it may reduce the amount of time series data required for a robust early warning signal. Author Summary: Fisheries, coral reefs, productive farmland, planetary climate, neural activity in the brain, and financial markets are all complex systems that can be susceptible to sudden changes leading to drastic re-organization or collapse. A variety of signals based on analysis of time-series data have been proposed that would provide warning of these so-called critical transitions. We propose a new method for calculating early warning signals that is complementary to existing approaches. The key step is to incorporate other available information about the system through the framework of a so-called generalized model. Our new approach may help to anticipate future catastrophic regime shifts in nature and society, allowing humankind to avert or to mitigate the consequences of the impending change.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven J Lade & Thilo Gross, 2012. "Early Warning Signals for Critical Transitions: A Generalized Modeling Approach," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(2), pages 1-6, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1002360
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002360
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002360
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002360&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002360?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marten Scheffer & Steve Carpenter & Jonathan A. Foley & Carl Folke & Brian Walker, 2001. "Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems," Nature, Nature, vol. 413(6856), pages 591-596, October.
    2. Jose G. Venegas & Tilo Winkler & Guido Musch & Marcos F. Vidal Melo & Dominick Layfield & Nora Tgavalekos & Alan J. Fischman & Ronald J. Callahan & Giacomo Bellani & R. Scott Harris, 2005. "Self-organized patchiness in asthma as a prelude to catastrophic shifts," Nature, Nature, vol. 434(7034), pages 777-782, April.
    3. Peter J. Mumby & Alan Hastings & Helen J. Edwards, 2007. "Thresholds and the resilience of Caribbean coral reefs," Nature, Nature, vol. 450(7166), pages 98-101, November.
    4. Marten Scheffer & Jordi Bascompte & William A. Brock & Victor Brovkin & Stephen R. Carpenter & Vasilis Dakos & Hermann Held & Egbert H. van Nes & Max Rietkerk & George Sugihara, 2009. "Early-warning signals for critical transitions," Nature, Nature, vol. 461(7260), pages 53-59, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tatiana Baumuratova & Simona Dobre & Thierry Bastogne & Thomas Sauter, 2013. "Switch of Sensitivity Dynamics Revealed with DyGloSA Toolbox for Dynamical Global Sensitivity Analysis as an Early Warning for System's Critical Transition," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-12, December.
    2. Kiran D’Souza & Bogdan I Epureanu & Mercedes Pascual, 2015. "Forecasting Bifurcations from Large Perturbation Recoveries in Feedback Ecosystems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, September.
    3. Georg Jäger & Manfred Füllsack, 2019. "Systematically false positives in early warning signal analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-14, February.
    4. Georg Jäger & Christian Hofer & Marie Kapeller & Manfred Füllsack, 2017. "Hidden early-warning signals in scale-free networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Vasilis Dakos & Stephen R Carpenter & William A Brock & Aaron M Ellison & Vishwesha Guttal & Anthony R Ives & Sonia Kéfi & Valerie Livina & David A Seekell & Egbert H van Nes & Marten Scheffer, 2012. "Methods for Detecting Early Warnings of Critical Transitions in Time Series Illustrated Using Simulated Ecological Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-20, July.
    6. Zeng, Chunhua & Wang, Hua, 2012. "Noise and large time delay: Accelerated catastrophic regime shifts in ecosystems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 233(C), pages 52-58.
    7. Florian Wagener, 2013. "Shallow lake economics run deep: nonlinear aspects of an economic-ecological interest conflict," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 423-450, December.
    8. Kevin Thellmann & Marc Cotter & Sabine Baumgartner & Anna Treydte & Georg Cadisch & Folkard Asch, 2018. "Tipping Points in the Supply of Ecosystem Services of a Mountainous Watershed in Southeast Asia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-15, July.
    9. Ren, Bijie & Polasky, Stephen, 2014. "The optimal management of renewable resources under the risk of potential regime shift," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 195-212.
    10. Dmitry Gromov & Thorsten Upmann, 2021. "Dynamics and Economics of Shallow Lakes: A Survey," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-16, December.
    11. Andrew R. Tilman & Elisabeth H. Krueger & Lisa C. McManus & James R. Watson, 2023. "Maintaining human wellbeing as socio-environmental systems undergo regime shifts," Papers 2309.04578, arXiv.org.
    12. Crépin, Anne-Sophie & Biggs, Reinette & Polasky, Stephen & Troell, Max & de Zeeuw, Aart, 2012. "Regime shifts and management," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 15-22.
    13. William A Brock & Stephen R Carpenter, 2012. "Early Warnings of Regime Shift When the Ecosystem Structure Is Unknown," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(9), pages 1-10, September.
    14. Zejie Zhou & Boleslaw K Szymanski & Jianxi Gao, 2020. "Modeling competitive evolution of multiple languages," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-16, May.
    15. de Zeeuw, Aart, 2017. "Integrating Economics and the Environment," Other publications TiSEM 8c8f2f81-5797-4429-9066-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Steven J. Lade & Alessandro Tavoni & Simon A. Levin & Maja Schl�ter, 2013. "Regime shifts in a social-ecological system," GRI Working Papers 105, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    17. Hembach-Stunden, Katharina & Vorlaufer, Tobias & Engel, Stefanie, 2024. "Threshold ambiguity and sustainable resource management: A lab experiment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    18. Krishnadas M. & K. P. Harikrishnan & G. Ambika, 2022. "Recurrence measures and transitions in stock market dynamics," Papers 2208.03456, arXiv.org.
    19. Lumi, Neeme & Laas, Katrin & Mankin, Romi, 2015. "Rising relative fluctuation as a warning indicator of discontinuous transitions in symbiotic metapopulations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 437(C), pages 109-118.
    20. William Lopes & Daniel R. Amor & Jeff Gore, 2024. "Cooperative growth in microbial communities is a driver of multistability," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1002360. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ploscompbiol (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.