Navigating the complexity of ecological stability
Why is this work in the frame?
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
No Canadian affiliation. An affiliation-only frame — the usual design — would never have seen this work. It is one of the works that make the case for inverting the frame.
Machine scores (provisional)
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
- Teacher spread
- 0.256 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
- Validation status
score_only:v0-immature-baseline· verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it
Abstract
Human actions challenge nature in many ways. Ecological responses are ineluctably complex, demanding measures that describe them succinctly. Collectively, these measures encapsulate the overall 'stability' of the system. Many international bodies, including the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, broadly aspire to maintain or enhance ecological stability. Such bodies frequently use terms pertaining to stability that lack clear definition. Consequently, we cannot measure them and so they disconnect from a large body of theoretical and empirical understanding. We assess the scientific and policy literature and show that this disconnect is one consequence of an inconsistent and one-dimensional approach that ecologists have taken to both disturbances and stability. This has led to confused communication of the nature of stability and the level of our insight into it. Disturbances and stability are multidimensional. Our understanding of them is not. We have a remarkably poor understanding of the impacts on stability of the characteristics that define many, perhaps all, of the most important elements of global change. We provide recommendations for theoreticians, empiricists and policymakers on how to better integrate the multidimensional nature of ecological stability into their research, policies and actions.
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The record
- Venue
- Ecology Letters
- Topic
- Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
- Field
- Environmental Science
- Canadian institutions
- —
- Funders
- European Regional Development FundNatural Environment Research CouncilUniversität ZürichSchweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungQueen's UniversityIrish Research CouncilSight Research UKDeutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftTrinity College DublinCentre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueHigher Education AuthorityAgence Nationale de la RechercheQueen's University Belfast
- Keywords
- Stability (learning theory)EcologyEcological stabilityEcological systems theoryBiodiversityEmpiricismEnvironmental resource managementComputer scienceEnvironmental scienceEpistemologyBiology
- Has abstract in OpenAlex
- yes