Evaluating Discontinuities in Complex Systems: Toward Quantitative Measures of Resilience

Ecology and Society

Craig Stow¹  Ahjond S. Garmestani²  Craig R. Allen³ 

[1] NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL);U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;University of Nebraska, USA;

关键词: discontinuities;    textural discontinuity hypothesis;    resilience;    scalebreaks;   

DOI  :  10.5751/ES-02055-120126

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The textural discontinuity hypothesis (TDH) is based on the observation that animal body mass distributions exhibit discontinuities that may reflect the texture of the landscape available for exploitation. This idea has been extended to other complex systems, hinting that the identification and quantification of discontinuities in the distributions of appropriate variables may provide clues to emergent system properties such as resilience. We propose a discontinuity index, based on the vector norm of the full assemblage of observed discontinuities, as a means to quantify and compare this characteristic among systems. We also evaluate four methods to identify the number and location of the most prominent discontinuities. Although results of the four methods are similar, they are not identical, and we conclude that this problem is best addressed with a consistent operationally defined approach in an adaptive inference framework.

【 授权许可】

Unknown