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Ecological Thresholds and Regime Shifts: from theory to operation

Andersen, Tom; Carstensen, Jacob; Hernandez-Garcia, Emilio; Duarte, Carlos
Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24, 49-57 (2009)

Objective detection of regime shifts remains a major challenge in ecology. There is an apparent gap between the prominence of present theoretical frameworks involving ecological thresholds and regime shifts, and the paucity of efforts to conduct simple tests and quantitative inferences on the actual occurrence of such phenomena in ecological data. There is a wide range of statistical methods and analytical techniques now available that render these questions tractable, some of them even dating half a century back. Yet, their application has been sparse and confined within a narrow subset of cases of ecological regime shifts. Raising awareness on the range of techniques available, their principles and limitations should promote a more operational approach to the analysis of ecological thresholds and regime shifts.