Scientists can now predict and compare tipping points so that resources can be directed where they are most urgently needed.
Scientists can now predict and compare tipping points so that resources can be directed where they are most urgently needed.
News headlines on extreme weather, melting ice caps, and threatened species are daily reminders of our changing environment. The profound scale and intensity of these challenges may leave one to wonder, “What should we do first?” Researchers recently developed formulas that help answer that question, effectively creating a method to triage declining ecosystems by measuring and comparing their distance to tipping points.
In research just published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a team led by Jianxi Gao, assistant professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, developed equations that allow the comparison of distances to tipping points across various mutualistic systems. In other words, for the first time, diverse environments can be analyzed as to how close they are to becoming completely and, perhaps, irrevocably, changed, and they can be compared with others to determine which areas need intervention most urgently.
Previously, scientists could detect early warning signals that a system may be approaching its tipping point, but they were unable to ascribe an exact value to a system’s distance from its tipping point. The value could define the likelihood that a system would transfer to the undesired state from the desired state, or how easily a tipping point could be reached.
Read more at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Photo Credit: Tumisu via Pixabay
