Knowledge gaps and missing links in understanding mass extinctions: Can mathematical modeling help?

Sudakow, Ivan; Myers, Christopher W.; Petrovskii, Sergei; Sumrall, Colin D.; Witts, James D.

doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2022.04.001

Cited by 15 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 303 publications

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“…Thus, marine ecosystems, phytoplankton in particular, play a crucial role in maintaining the habitable Earth (Sudakow et al. 2022 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A two-timescale model of plankton–oxygen dynamics predicts formation of oxygen minimum zones and global anoxia

Roy Chowdhury,

Banerjee,

Petrovskii

2024

J. Math. Biol.

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Decline of the dissolved oxygen in the ocean is a growing concern, as it may eventually lead to global anoxia, an elevated mortality of marine fauna and even a mass extinction. Deoxygenation of the ocean often results in the formation of oxygen minimum zones (OMZ): large domains where the abundance of oxygen is much lower than that in the surrounding ocean environment. Factors and processes resulting in the OMZ formation remain controversial. We consider a conceptual model of coupled plankton–oxygen dynamics that, apart from the plankton growth and the oxygen production by phytoplankton, also accounts for the difference in the timescales for phyto- and zooplankton (making it a “slow-fast system”) and for the implicit effect of upper trophic levels resulting in density dependent (nonlinear) zooplankton mortality. The model is investigated using a combination of analytical techniques and numerical simulations. The slow-fast system is decomposed into its slow and fast subsystems. The critical manifold of the slow-fast system and its stability is then studied by analyzing the bifurcation structure of the fast subsystem. We obtain the canard cycles of the slow-fast system for a range of parameter values. However, the system does not allow for persistent relaxation oscillations; instead, the blowup of the canard cycle results in plankton extinction and oxygen depletion. For the spatially explicit model, the earlier works in this direction did not take into account the density dependent mortality rate of the zooplankton, and thus could exhibit Turing pattern. However, the inclusion of the density dependent mortality into the system can lead to stationary Turing patterns. The dynamics of the system is then studied near the Turing bifurcation threshold. We further consider the effect of the self-movement of the zooplankton along with the turbulent mixing. We show that an initial non-uniform perturbation can lead to the formation of an OMZ, which then grows in size and spreads over space. For a sufficiently large timescale separation, the spread of the OMZ can result in global anoxia.

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“…Thus, marine ecosystems, phytoplankton in particular, play a crucial role in maintaining the habitable Earth (Sudakow et al. 2022 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 2014 ; Sudakow et al. 2022 ). Thus, better understanding of the pathways leading to the global anoxia as well as the identification of possible early signs of the approaching catastrophe are obviously problems of literally vital importance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A two-timescale model of plankton–oxygen dynamics predicts formation of oxygen minimum zones and global anoxia

Roy Chowdhury,

Banerjee,

Petrovskii

2024

J. Math. Biol.

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“…Importantly, all these physical models are driven by socio-economic and policy scenarios that make assumptions about future greenhouse gas emissions to and removals from the atmosphere. Mechanistic, process-based models have a significant potential to link a biodiversity loss or even a mass extinction to a specific environmental trigger and/or to trace the effect of a particular environmental perturbation through a cascade of secondary processes [31]. Integrated Assessment Models [14,[32][33][34][35] explicitly link the socio-economic and policy systems to the geophysical and biophysical models in order to simulate feedback between the two.…”

Section: Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Loss and Damage from Climate Change: Knowledge Gaps and Interdisciplinary Approaches

Balzter,

Macul,

Delaney

et al. 2023

Sustainability

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Loss and damage from climate change have risen to a prominent position on the international agenda. At COP27 in 2022, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ratified a decision to establish a loss and damage fund to compensate low- and middle-income countries that are suffering negative impacts from climate change. The fund is meant to address the Global Adaptation Gap, which describes the rising cost of adaptation needed to cope with climate change impacts due to delayed action to curb greenhouse gas emissions and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This essay highlights issues around loss and damage from climate change from a variety of natural and social science perspectives. From three months of discussions, an interdisciplinary perspective and research agenda on this topic have crystallised, which is outlined here. Given that the implementation of the loss and damage fund still needs negotiation and commitment from signatories to the UNFCCC, it is timely now to address some important knowledge gaps on how loss and damage can be measured, quantified, valued, understood, communicated, and adapted to. Hence, it is necessary to understand the complex interactions between people, politics, nature, and climate in this interdisciplinary context.

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Describing the evolution and perturbations to biodiversity using a simple dynamical model

et al. 2023

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In this work, we outline a mathematical description of biodiversity evolution throughout the Phanerozoic based on a simple coupled system of two differential equations and on the division of genera in two classes—Short‐lived and Long‐lived types, as used by Rohde and Muller. We show that while the division in only two classes cannot capture the complexity of biodiversity evolution in short scales, broad trends can be described well. We also compute the systems' Green functions as a way to qualitatively describe the possible effects of intense perturbations of astrophysical origin on the subsequent biodiversity evolution.

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Knowledge gaps and missing links in understanding mass extinctions: Can mathematical modeling help?

Cited by 15 publications

References 303 publications

A two-timescale model of plankton–oxygen dynamics predicts formation of oxygen minimum zones and global anoxia

A two-timescale model of plankton–oxygen dynamics predicts formation of oxygen minimum zones and global anoxia

Loss and Damage from Climate Change: Knowledge Gaps and Interdisciplinary Approaches

Describing the evolution and perturbations to biodiversity using a simple dynamical model

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