| Description |
Diverse ecological systems, from swarms of locusts to forests, can show drastic (discontinuous) response in their states even for the smallest changes in external conditions. In this talk, I will present how principles of nonequilibrium phase transitions from physics can be employed to devise early warning signals of such ecological transitions. It will be shown that simple measurable quantities such as changing skewness in timeseries data, and rising trends in variance and skewness of spatial data can act as leading indicators of abrupt transitions. I will present empirical evidence for the utility of these techniques.
|