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

Chih-hao Hsieh, Sarah M. Glaser, Andrew J. Lucas and George Sugihara ()
Additional contact information
Chih-hao Hsieh: University of California
Sarah M. Glaser: University of California
Andrew J. Lucas: University of California
George Sugihara: University of California

Nature, 2005, vol. 435, issue 7040, 336-340

Abstract: An ocean on the brink Worries over sudden climate change and irreversible environmental change are rooted in the notion that complex natural systems might respond to change in a ‘nonlinear’ fashion: small changes might cause dramatic pathological behaviours in an ecosystem. Whether large-scale marine environments are balanced on a knife edge like this has been a matter of debate, but a new assessment of physical and biological data sources in the North Pacific shows that the biological variables show the ‘nonlinear’ behaviour that people are worried about. In practical terms, this suggests that a ‘precautionary’ approach should be taken to the management of marine ecosystems, by setting conservative fisheries quotas for instance.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03553 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:435:y:2005:i:7040:d:10.1038_nature03553

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature03553

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().