Regime Shifts

Arctic sea-ice loss

Bivalves collapse

Bush encroachment

Coastal marine eutrophication

Common pool resource harvesting

Coniferous to deciduous boreal forest

Coral transitions

Fisheries collapse

Forest to savannas

Freshwater eutrophication

Greenland ice sheet collapse

Hypoxia

Indian summer monsoon

Kelp transitions

Mangrove transitions

Marine food webs

Peatland transitions

River channel position

Salt marsh to tidal flat

Seagrass transitions

Soil salinization

Sprawling vs compact city

Steppe to tundra

Submerged to floating plants

Thermohaline circulation

Thermokarst lake to terrestrial ecosystem

Tundra to boreal forest

West antarctic ice sheet collapse

How do regime shifts work?

Different regimes can be metaphorically represented by a ball-and-cup diagram. The valleys or cups represent different regimes or fundamental ways in which the system can function and be structured. A regime shift entails a shift in the current system state (represented as a ball) from one cup or valley to another. While in a particular regime, it is important to note that the system does not remain stable but fluctuates around.

Regime shifts result from a change in the dominant feedbacks. All complex systems contain many feedback loops, but these can typically evolve and combine in only a limited number of ways. Over time, a particular combination of feedbacks will tend to become dominant, leading the system to self-organize into a particular structure and function – or “regime”. However, if the system experiences a large shock (eg a volcano) or persistent directional change (eg accumulation of pollutants, habitat loss) the dominant feedbacks may be overwhelmed or eroded. At some point a critical threshold may be passed where a different set of feedbacks become dominant, and the system experiences a large, often abrupt change in structure and function – or a “regime shift”.

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Further reading

• Biggs R, Blenckner T, Folke C, Gordon L, Norström A, Nyström M & Peterson GD. 2011. Regime Shifts. In: Sourcebook in Theoretical Ecology. Hastings A & Gross L (eds). University of California Press, Berkeley.
• May RM, Levin SA, Sugihara G. 2008. Ecology for Bankers. Nature 451, 893-895.
• Scheffer M. 2009. Critical transitions in Nature and Society. Princeton University Press.
• Scheffer M, Carpenter SR, Foley JA, Folke C & Walker BH. 2001. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature 413, 591-596.

Online resources:

• Regime Shifts: What are they and why do they matter? http://www.regimeshifts.org/datasets-resources/details/15/26
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime_shift
• Resilience Alliance Thresholds Database: http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/thresholds_database

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. It is an initiative lead by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. The website was developed by Juan Rocha and build with Rmarkdown.