Distinguishing random environmental fluctuations from ecological catastrophes for the North Pacific Ocean

被引:266
作者
Hsieh, CH [1 ]
Glaser, SM [1 ]
Lucas, AJ [1 ]
Sugihara, G [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Calif San Diego, Scripps Inst Oceanog, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA
基金
美国海洋和大气管理局;
关键词
D O I
10.1038/nature03553
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
The prospect of rapid dynamic changes in the environment is a pressing concern that has profound management and public policy implications(1,2). Worries over sudden climate change and irreversible changes in ecosystems are rooted in the potential that nonlinear systems have for complex and 'pathological' behaviours(1,2). Nonlinear behaviours have been shown in model systems(3) and in some natural systems(1,4-8), but their occurrence in large-scale marine environments remains controversial(9,10). Here we show that time series observations of key physical variables(11-14) for the North Pacific Ocean that seem to show these behaviours are not deterministically nonlinear, and are best described as linear stochastic. In contrast, we find that time series for biological variables(5,15-17) having similar properties exhibit a low-dimensional nonlinear signature. To our knowledge, this is the first direct test for nonlinearity in large-scale physical and biological data for the marine environment. These results address a continuing debate over the origin of rapid shifts in certain key marine observations as coming from essentially stochastic processes or from dominant nonlinear mechanisms(1,9,10,18-20). Our measurements suggest that large-scale marine ecosystems are dynamically nonlinear, and as such have the capacity for dramatic change in response to stochastic fluctuations in basin-scale physical states.
引用
收藏
页码:336 / 340
页数:5
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