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Early warning signals for critical transitions: a generalized modeling approach.

ABSTRACT: Critical transitions are sudden, often irreversible, changes that can occur in a large variety of complex systems; signals that warn of critical transitions are therefore highly desirable. We propose a new method for early warning signals that integrates multiple sources of information and data about the system through the framework of a generalized model. We demonstrate our proposed approach through several examples, including a previously published fisheries model. We regard our method as complementary to existing early warning signals, taking an approach of intermediate complexity between model-free approaches and fully parameterized simulations. One potential advantage of our approach is that, under appropriate conditions, it may reduce the amount of time series data required for a robust early warning signal.

SUBMITTER: Lade SJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3271022 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Early warning signals for critical transitions: a generalized modeling approach.

Lade Steven J SJ Gross Thilo T

PLoS computational biology 20120202 2

Critical transitions are sudden, often irreversible, changes that can occur in a large variety of complex systems; signals that warn of critical transitions are therefore highly desirable. We propose a new method for early warning signals that integrates multiple sources of information and data about the system through the framework of a generalized model. We demonstrate our proposed approach through several examples, including a previously published fisheries model. We regard our method as comp ...[more]

PMID: 22319432

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