Regime shifts, tipping points, and the arts



Juan C. Rocha

slides: juanrocha.se/presentatioins/beckmans

Outline

  1. What are regime shifts? and how do we compare them?

  2. A bit of theory and history about tipping points

  3. What are their main drivers and impacts?

  4. How people behave when facing thresholds?

1. What are regime shifts?

Forest to savanna

Regime shifts are large, abrupt and persistence critical transitions in the function and structure of (eco)systems

Coral transitions

Regime shifts are large, abrupt and persistence critical transitions in the function and structure of (eco)systems

Fisheries collapse

Regime shifts are large, abrupt and persistence critical transitions in the function and structure of (eco)systems

Same atoms but organized differently. It change the structure and function of the system

1. … how do we compare regime shifts?

Regime Shifts Database

RSDB

www.regimeshifts.org

2. A bit of theory and history about tipping points

Regime shifts & tipping points

“Large, persistent (and usually abrupt) shifts in the structure and function of a system”

Andersen, J. et al. Trends Ecol Evol. (2009).

Abruptness affects the capacity to adapt to changes

Why are regime shifts important?

RS

History in Ecology

Figure by Jenn Burt

History outside Ecology

Henri Poincaré, 1854-1912

History in the Arts

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

3. What are their main drivers and impacts?

Drivers

Impacts and management

Rocha, J. et al. 2015. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 20130273. doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0273

4. How people behave when facing thresholds?

Rocha et al. Cooperation in the Face of Thresholds, Risk, and Uncertainty

  • Regime shifts in marine environments
    • Fisheries collapse
    • Mangroves collapse
    • Coral transitions
    • Coastal eutrophication
    • Hypoxia
  • Potential impacts on society
    • ~50M people depend on small-scale fisheries
    • Mostly in developing countries

Method: Framed field experiment

History of regime shifts

  • 256 fishers groups of 4 players
  • Communication allowed
  • Threshod: 100% probability of climate event
  • Risk: 50% probability
  • Uncertainty: 10-90% probability

Fishermen facing thresholds fish less

Rocha et al. Cooperation in the Face of Thresholds, Risk, and Uncertainty

It’s harder to coordinate under treatments, but agreements increase the probability to coordinate and react to lower stock sizes by reducing fishing preasure. Agreements also reduce the variance of extraction and the variance of cooperation. Changes in fishing effort depends on treatments while changes in cooperation depends on context.

Lessons

  • Fishermen facing thresholds fish less – they take care of the resources
  • By reducing fishing effort or keeping close to the social optimal people do cooperate. However, cooperation by itself is not affected by our treatments, it seems to be driven more by personal and group dynamics.
  • If the existence of threshold effects already triggers cooperative behavior in natural resource users, then communicating their potential effects on ecosystems and society is more important that quantifying the precise point at which ecosystems tip over. Specially because such thresholds are hard to observe, measure, and they change over time.

What have we learnt today:

  1. What are regime shifts? and how do we compare them?
    Biggs, et al. 2018. Ecology & Society

  2. What are their main drivers?
    Rocha et al. 2015. PlosOne

  3. How do we manage them in aquatic systems?
    Rocha et al. 2015. Phil. Trans. R. Soc B

  4. Can regime shifts be interconnected?
    Rocha et al, 2018. Science

  5. How people behave when facing thresholds?
    Rocha et al. 2019 SSRN preprint

Tack!

Questions?


email: juan.rocha@su.se
twitter: @juanrocha
slides: juanrocha.se/slides/Beckmans



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