RESILIENCE: Pathways of resilience and evasion of tipping in ecosystems

The aim of RESILIENCE is to fundamentally advance our understanding and predictions of tipping and critical transitions in ecosystems and reveal how these can be evaded and even reversed through spatial pattern formation.

There is an urgent need to understand the catastrophic effects that global environmental and climate change can have on the Earth, its system components and ecosystems. One area of critical concern is the imminent high-impact, abrupt and irreversible tipping of ecosystems. Recent discoveries indicate that tipping could be evaded and even reversed in ecosystems through spatial pattern formation of vegetation, thereby creating pathways of resilience. Many undiscovered pathways of resilience through spatial pattern formation could exist for tipping-prone ecosystems. This resilience could be even enhanced by the unexplored connection between spatial pattern formation and community assembly.

A new theory for resilience

RESILIENCE will develop a new theory for emerging resilience through spatial pattern formation and link this with real tipping-prone biomes undergoing accelerating global change: savanna and tundra. Central to the theoretical approach is the novel mathematical connection between the origin of the formation of patterns and their resilience once they emerged.

RESILIENCE will improve the estimation of tipping probabilities and helps reducing the probability of a false alarm through accurate assessment of statistical significance. By this RESILIENCE provides input to prevent harm to humanity by giving the chance of taking appropriate measures in advance.

The project is funded by Horizon Europe and runs from 2023 to 2029.