Measuring the relative resilience of subarctic lakes to global change: redundancies of functions within and across temporal scales

Abstract

Summary1. Ecosystems at high altitudes and latitudes are expected to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of global change. We assessed the responses of littoral invertebrate communities to changing abiotic conditions in subarctic Swedish lakes with long-term data and compared the responses of subarctic lakes with those of more southern, hemiboreal lakes. 2. We used a complex systems approach, based on multivariate time-series modelling, and identified dominant and distinct temporal frequencies in the data; that is, we tracked community change at distinct temporal scales. We determined the distribution of functional feeding groups of invertebrates within and across temporal scales. Within and cross-scale distributions of functions have been considered to confer resilience to ecosystems, despite changing environmental conditions. 3. Two patterns of temporal change within the invertebrate communities were identified that were consistent across the lakes. The first pattern was one of monotonic change associated with changing abiotic lake conditions. The second was one of showing fluctuation patterns largely unrelated to gradual environmental change. Thus, two dominant and distinct temporal frequencies (temporal scales) were present in all lakes analysed. 4. Although the contribution of individual feeding groups varied between subarctic and hemiboreal lakes, they shared overall similar functional attributes (richness, evenness, diversity) and redundancies of functions within and between the observed temporal scales. This highlights similar resilience characteristics in subarctic and hemiboreal lakes. 5. Synthesis and applications. The effects of global change can be particularly strong at a single scale in ecosystems. Over time, this can cause monotonic change in communities and eventually lead to a loss of important ecosystem services upon reaching a critical threshold. Dynamics at other spatial or temporal scales can be unrelated to environmental change. The relative 'intactness' of these scales that are unaffected by global change and the persistence of functions at those scales may safeguard the whole system from the potential loss of functions at the scale at which global change impacts can be substantial. Thus, an understanding of scale-specific processes provides managers with a realistic assessment of vulnerabilities and the relative resilience of ecosystems to environmental change. Explicit consideration of 'intact' and 'affected' scales in analyses of global change impacts provides opportunities to tailor more specific management plans.

Transdisciplinary Application of Cross-Scale Resilience

“…For example, the approach has been used to assess the resilience of subarctic lakes that are presumably threatened by global change, with vulnerability thought to increase with latitude [41]. However, Angeler et al [41] found that boreal and circumboreal lakes were both surprisingly robust to changing environmental conditions, because the distribution of functional feeding guilds of invertebrates were similar within and across scales for all lakes. However, managing specific scales within the lakes was deemed impossible because the cross-scale distributions reflected environmental change at broad spatial extents with slow dynamics that are difficult to control.…”

“…In ecological systems, this is represented by species' functional traits, while in economies it might be the diversification of sectors contributing to GDP, or in anthropological studies the diversity of food resources available to populations. The next step is to analyze the distribution of functional attributes within and across the scale domains identified [41,72,78]. Are the functions non-randomly distributed?…”

“…The cross-scale resilience model extended the discontinuity hypothesis by providing a testable hypothesis for how system-level resilience can emerge from species' interactions with environmental structures and processes that vary with scale [1]. This model has provided one of the few quantitative measures of resilience available to date [39][40][41], despite the widespread uptake of the resilience concept. It specifically accounts for scaling and hierarchy in ways that network theory does not, but conversely, it can only speak to the relationships between objects in a system in a general way.…”

Quantifying spatial scaling patterns and their local and regional correlates in headwater streams: implications for resilience

“…For instance, many studies have determined the number of scales, as well as the species and their functional traits associated with each scale, by studying discontinuities in body mass distributions in animals (Allen and Holling 2008). Others have used time series modeling to identify scales of fluctuation frequencies based on abundance and biomass data (Angeler et al 2011(Angeler et al , 2013a. However, the cross-scale resilience model, i.e., within-and cross-scale functional redundancy, has been tested with limited data for a few terrestrial (Forys and Allen 2002, Allen et al 2005, Fischer et al 2007) and aquatic ecosystems (Angeler et al 2013a, b).…”

Resiliencia Y Turismo: El Caso De La Ciudad De Baños De Agua Santa - Ecuador

“…Sin establecer aún una jerarquía o peso ponderado, ni sus relaciones de dependencia, a manera de una primera aproximación; se los entenderá como "capacidades y factores determinantes", dentro de este contexto, se pueden definir cuatro capacidades fundamentales que presentan los sistemas adaptativos complejos y que son inherentes a la resiliencia, así: la capacidad de aprendizaje; la capacidad de auto-organización, la adaptabilidad y la capacidad de transformación (Adger et al, 2005;Gall, 2013;Gunderson, 2000;Walker et al, 2004). De la misma manera se pueden identificar cuatro factores críticos que son determinantes para la resiliencia en un sistema adaptativo complejo, estos son: la redundancia, la diversidad, la modularidad y la apertura (Angeler et al,2013;Carpenter et al, 2012;Walker & Salt, 2012).…”