Timing recovery of ecosystems in sequential remotely sensed and simulated data
van Belzen, J.; van de Koppel, J.; van der Wal, D.; Herman, P.M.J.; Dakos, V.; Kéfi, S.; Scheffer, M.; Bouma, T.J. (2017). Timing recovery of ecosystems in sequential remotely sensed and simulated data . Protocol Exchange June 2017. https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/protex.2017.038
The time needed for ecosystems to recover from a disturbance has been proposed as a generic indicator of ecosystem resilience. The lengthening of the recovery time with increasing stress is referred to as “Critical Slowing Down” and has been proposed as an early warning of a nearing tipping point. Hence, methodologies for measuring recovery rates and critical slowing down in remotely sensed data might provide a powerful way to synoptically asses ecosystem resilience. Here, we present a protocol using an algorithm to measure the recovery time after a disturbance from sequential spatial data. The algorithm can be applied to both empirical, e.g. remotely sensed, and simulated spatial data.
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