A four-day workshop will use LTER data, including data from the EcoTrends project, to bridge the gap between the relatively mature theoretical understanding of thresholds and state changes in ecological systems and the emerging empirical databases that allow us to actually test models of state changes.
Many of these changes represent “tipping points” or dramatic changes in the states of the systems, and our workshop will use data from terrestrial, coastal, and open-ocean systems to illustrate common mechanisms underlying state changes and threshold dynamics.
1)Brandon T. Bestelmeyer, Aaron M. Ellison, William R. Fraser, Kristen B. Gorman, Sally J.Holbrook, Christine M. Laney, Mark D. Ohman, Debra P.C. Peters, Finn C. Pillsbury,Andrew Rassweiler, Russell J. Schmitt, Sapna Sharma. “Analysis of abrupt transitions in ecological systems.” 2011. Ecosphere 2:129.
2)A manuscript was completed and was submitted to PNAS on 8 June 2011.
