Resilience indicators: prospects and limitations for early warnings of regime shifts

In the vicinity of tipping points—or more precisely bifurcation points—ecosystems recover slowly from small perturbations. Such slowness may be interpreted as a sign of low resilience in the sense that the ecosystem could easily be tipped through a critical transition into a contrasting state. Indicators of this phenomenon of ‘critical slowing down (CSD)’ include a rise in temporal correlation and variance. Such indicators of CSD can provide an early warning signal of a nearby tipping point. Or, they may offer a possibility to rank reefs, lakes or other ecosystems according to their resilience. The fact that CSD may happen across a wide range of complex ecosystems close to tipping points implies a powerful…