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Related papers: Rethinking tipping points in spatial ecosystems

200 papers

With rising global temperatures Earth's tipping elements are becoming increasingly more vulnerable to crossing their critical thresholds. The reaching of such tipping points does not only impact other tipping elements through their…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2025-05-08 Tom Bdolach , Jürgen Kurths , Serhiy Yanchuk

The early prediction of tipping points, distinguished by sudden and catastrophic shifts from stable states, poses a challenging task that would enable us to assess the impending threat across natural and engineered systems. This threat…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-02 Tapas Bar , Anurag Banerjee , Blai Casals , Gustau Catalan , Javier Rodríguez-Viejo

Nonlinear dynamical systems may be exposed to tipping points, critical thresholds at which small changes in the external inputs or in the systems parameters abruptly shift the system to an alternative state with a contrasting dynamical…

Chaotic Dynamics · Physics 2016-10-07 Everton S. Medeiros , Iberê L. Caldas , Murilo S. Baptista , Ulrike Feudel

Multiple stable states - the coexistence of two or more distinct ecological configurations under identical environmental conditions - have attracted sustained interest in ecology, yet the field still lacks a unified framework connecting…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2026-05-08 Jennifer Paige , Denis D. Patterson , Alan Hastings

Social behaviour models are increasingly integrated into climate change studies, and the significance of climate tipping points for `runaway' climate change is well recognised. However, there has been insufficient focus on tipping points in…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2025-01-27 Yazdan Babazadeh Maghsoodlo , Madhur Anand , Chris T. Bauch

This review synthesizes recent advancements in understanding tipping points and cascading transitions within the Earth system, framing them through the lens of nonlinear dynamics and complexity science. It outlines the fundamental concepts…

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics · Physics 2025-11-04 Sheng Fang , Ziyan Wang , Jürgen Kurths , Jingfang Fan

The potential for complex systems to exhibit tipping points in which an equilibrium state undergoes a sudden and often irreversible shift is well established, but prediction of these events using standard forecast modeling techniques is…

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics · Physics 2022-12-07 Daniel Dylewsky , Timothy M. Lenton , Marten Scheffer , Thomas M. Bury , Christopher G. Fletcher , Madhur Anand , Chris T. Bauch

It is often known, from modelling studies, that a certain mode of climate tipping (of the oceanic thermohaline circulation, for example) is governed by an underlying fold bifurcation. For such a case we present a scheme of analysis that…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2010-12-15 J. M. T. Thompson , Jan Sieber

Models of complex dynamical systems like the Earth's climate often involve large numbers of uncertain parameters. Comprehensive exploration of the parameter space is typically prohibitive due to excessive computational costs. Systematic…

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics · Physics 2026-03-27 Daniel Pals , Sebastian Bathiany , Richard Wood , Joel Kuettel , Niklas Boers

Multistability is a phenomenon prevalent in many natural systems. In climate, for example, it allows the possibility of irreversible consequences on planetary scale as a result of climate change. Indeed, a climate ``tipping element'' is a…

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics · Physics 2026-04-14 George Datseris , Johannes Lohmann , Oisín Hamilton , Jacob Haqq-Misra

Dryland vegetation ecosystems are known to be susceptible to critical transitions between alternative stable states when subjected to external forcing. Such transitions are often discussed through the framework of bifurcation theory, but…

Computational Physics · Physics 2025-05-16 Daniel Dylewsky , Sonia Kéfi , Madhur Anand , Chris T. Bauch

Earth system tipping elements have been predominantly investigated for their potential to trigger \textit{negative} ecological, climatic, and societal shifts. Yet, an overlooked but seminal avenue exists in the form of \textit{positive}…

Spatial distribution of the human population is distinctly heterogeneous, e.g. showing significant difference in the population density between urban and rural areas. In the historical perspective, i.e. on the timescale of centuries, the…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2022-08-30 Anna Zincenko , Sergei Petrovskii , Vitaly Volpert

Spatial patterns are widely observed in numerous nonequilibrium natural systems, often undergoing complex transitions and bifurcations, thereby exhibiting significant importance in many physical and biological systems such as embryonic…

Biological Physics · Physics 2024-12-17 Jie Su , Wei Wu , Denis Patterson , Simon Asher Levin , Jin Wang

Tipping points associated with bifurcations (B-tipping) or induced by noise (N-tipping) are recognized mechanisms that may potentially lead to sudden climate change. We focus here a novel class of tipping points, where a sufficiently rapid…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2013-02-14 Peter Ashwin , Sebastian Wieczorek , Renato Vitolo , Peter Cox

Many complex networks are known to exhibit sudden transitions between alternative steady states with contrasting properties. Such a sudden transition demonstrates a network's resilience, which is the ability of a system to persist in the…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2021-02-24 Subhendu Bhandary , Taranjot Kaur , Tanmoy Banerjee , Partha Sharathi Dutta

A presumed impact of global climate change is the increase in frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones. Due to the possible destruction that occurs when tropical cyclones make landfall, understanding their formation should be of mass…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2023-07-31 Katherine Slyman , John A. Gemmer , Nicholas K. Corak , Claire Kiers , Christopher K. R. T. Jones

Ecosystems display a complex spatial organization. Ecologists have long tried to characterize them by looking at how different measures of biodiversity change across spatial scales. Ecological neutral theory has provided simple predictions…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2017-12-13 Simone Pigolotti , Massimo Cencini , Daniel Molina , Miguel A. Muñoz

Societal transformations are necessary to address critical global challenges, such as mitigation of anthropogenic climate change and reaching UN sustainable development goals. Recently, social tipping processes have received increased…

Tipping elements in the climate system are large-scale subregions of the Earth that might possess threshold behavior under global warming with large potential impacts on human societies. Here, we study a subset of five tipping elements and…

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics · Physics 2023-10-25 Nico Wunderling , Maximilian Gelbrecht , Ricarda Winkelmann , Jürgen Kurths , Jonathan Donges