Abstract
During the Anthropocene and other eras of rapidly changing climates, rates of change of ecological systems can be described as fast, slow or abrupt. Fast ecological responses closely track climate change, slow responses substantively lag climate forcing, causing disequilibria and reduced fitness, and abrupt responses are characterized by nonlinear, threshold-type responses at rates that are large relative to background variability and forcing. All three kinds of climate-driven ecological dynamics are well documented in contemporary studies, palaeoecology and invasion biology. This fast–slow–abrupt conceptual framework helps unify a bifurcated climate-change literature, which tends to separately consider the ecological risks posed by slow or abrupt ecological dynamics. Given the prospect of ongoing climate change for the next several decades to centuries of the Anthropocene and wide variations in ecological rates of change, the theory and practice of managing ecological systems should shift attention from target states to target rates. A rates-focused framework broadens the strategic menu for managers to include options to both slow and accelerate ecological rates of change, seeks to reduce mismatch among climate and ecological rates of change, and provides a unified conceptual framework for tackling the distinct risks associated with fast, slow and abrupt ecological rates of change.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (b); Jens-Christian Svenning (c); Stephen T. Jackson, Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, US Geological Survey (d).
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O. & Ludwig, C. The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. Anthr. Rev. 2, 81–98 (2015).
Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P. & McNeill, J. The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369, 842–867 (2011).
Steinbauer, M. J. et al. Accelerated increase in plant species richness on mountain summits is linked to warming. Nature 556, 231–234 (2018).
McInerney, F. A. & Wing, S. L. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: a perturbation of carbon cycle, climate, and biosphere with implications for the future. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 39, 489–516 (2011).
Herrero, C., García-Olivares, A. & Pelegrí, J. L. Impact of anthropogenic CO2 on the next glacial cycle. Clim. Change 122, 283–298 (2014).
Clark, P. U. et al. Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 360–369 (2016).
Berger, A. & Loutre, M. F. An exceptionally long interglacial ahead? Science 297, 1287–1288 (2002).
Burke, K. D. et al. Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogues for near-future climates. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 13288–13293 (2018).
Fisichelli, N. A., Schuurman, G. W. & Hoffman, C. H. Is ‘resilience’ maladaptive? Towards an accurate lexicon for climate change adaptation. Environ. Manag. 57, 753–758 (2016).
Prober, S. M., Doerr, V. A. J., Broadhurst, L. M., Williams, K. J. & Dickson, F. Shifting the conservation paradigm: a synthesis of options for renovating nature under climate change. Ecol. Monogr. 89, e01333 (2019).
Scheffers, B. R. & Pecl, G. Persecuting, protecting or ignoring biodiversity under climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 9, 581–586 (2019).
Barnosky, A. D. et al. Merging paleobiology with conservation biology to guide the future of terrestrial ecosystems. Science 355, eaah4787 (2017).
Hughes, F. M. R., Adams, W. M. & Stroh, P. A. When is open-endedness desirable in restoration projects? Restor. Ecol. 20, 291–295 (2012).
Williams, J. W. & Burke, K. in Climate Change and Biodiversity: Transforming the Biosphere (eds Lovejoy, T & Hannah, L.) 128–141 (Yale Univ. Press, 2019).
Webb, T. III. Is vegetation in equilibrium with climate? How to interpret late-Quaternary pollen data. Vegetatio 67, 75–91 (1986).
Blonder, B. et al. Predictability in community dynamics. Ecol. Lett. 20, 293–306 (2017).
Svenning, J.-C. & Sandel, B. Disequilibrium vegetation dynamics under future climate change. Am. J. Bot. 100, 1266–1286 (2013).
Huntley, B. et al. Climatic disequilibrium threatens conservation priority forests. Conserv. Lett. 11, e12349 (2018).
Bertrand, R. et al. Ecological constraints increase the climatic debt in forests. Nat. Commun. 7, 12643 (2016).
Zimova, M., Mills, L. S. & Nowak, J. J. High fitness costs of climate change-induced camouflage mismatch. Ecol. Lett. 19, 299–307 (2016).
Visser, M. E. & Gienapp, P. Evolutionary and demographic consequences of phenological mismatches. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 3, 879–885 (2019).
Davis, M. B. & Shaw, R. G. Range shifts and adaptive responses to Quaternary climate change. Science 292, 673–679 (2001).
Ratajczak, Z. et al. Abrupt change in ecological systems: inference and diagnosis. Trends Ecol. Evol. 33, 513–526 (2018).
Hughes, T. P. et al. Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals. Nature 543, 373–377 (2017).
Williams, J. W., Blois, J. L. & Shuman, B. N. Extrinsic and intrinsic forcing of abrupt ecological change: case studies from the late Quaternary. J. Ecol. 99, 664–677 (2011).
Lenton, T. M. et al. Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 1786–1793 (2008).
Scheffer, M. et al. Anticipating critical transitions. Science 338, 344–348 (2012).
Scheffer, M., Hirota, M., Holmgren, M., Van Nes, E. H. & Chapin, F. S. Thresholds for boreal biome transitions. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 21384–21389 (2012).
Boettiger, C. & Hastings, A. Tipping points: from patterns to predictions. Nature 493, 157–158 (2013).
Boettiger, C., Ross, N. & Hastings, A. Early warning signals: the charted and uncharted territories. Theor. Ecol. 6, 255–264 (2013).
Lenton, T. M. et al. Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against. Nature 575, 593–595 (2019).
Devictor, V., Julliard, R., Couvet, D. & Jiguet, F. Birds are tracking climate warming, but not fast enough. Proc. R. Soc. B 275, 2743–2748 (2008).
Dakos, V., Carpenter, S. R., van Nes, E. H. & Scheffer, M. Resilience indicators: prospects and limitations for early warnings of regime shifts. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 370, 20130263 (2014).
IPCC in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) Summary for Policymakers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).
Pecl, G. T. et al. Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science 355, eaai9214 (2017).
Kudo, G. & Ida, T. Y. Early onset of spring increases the phenological mismatch between plants and pollinators. Ecology 94, 2311–2320 (2013).
Körner, C. & Basler, D. Phenology under global warming. Science 327, 1461–1462 (2010).
Seddon, A. W. R., Macias-Fauria, M., Long, P. R., Benz, D. & Willis, K. J. Sensitivity of global terrestrial ecosystems to climate variability. Nature 531, 229–232 (2016).
Chen, I. C., Hill, J. K., Ohlemüller, R., Roy, D. B. & Thomas, C. D. Rapid range shifts of species associated with high levels of climate warming. Science 333, 1024–1026 (2011).
Lenoir, J., Gégout, J. C., Marquet, P. A., de Ruffray, P. & Brisse, H. A significant upward shift in plant species optimum elevation during the 20th Century. Science 320, 1768–1771 (2008).
Bellemare, J. & Deeg, C. Horticultural escape and naturalization of Magnolia tripetala in western Massachusetts: biogeographic context and possible relationship to recent climate change. Rhodora 117, 371–383 (2015).
Blowes, S. A. et al. The geography of biodiversity change in marine and terrestrial assemblages. Science 366, 339–345 (2019).
Dornelas, M. et al. Assemblage time series reveal biodiversity change but not systematic loss. Science 344, 296–299 (2014).
Parmesan, C. Influences of species, latitudes and methodologies on estimates of phenological response to global warming. Glob. Change Biol. 13, 1860–1872 (2007).
Albright, T. P. et al. Heat waves measured with MODIS land surface temperature data predict changes in avian community structure. Remote Sens. Environ. 115, 245–254 (2011).
Cazelles, K. et al. Homogenization of freshwater lakes: recent compositional shifts in fish communities are explained by gamefish movement and not climate change. Glob. Change Biol. 25, 4222–4233 (2019).
Guo, F., Lenoir, J. & Bonebrake, T. C. Land-use change interacts with climate to determine elevational species redistribution. Nat. Commun. 9, 1315 (2018).
Abatzoglou, J. T., Dobrowski, S. Z. & Parks, S. A. Multivariate climate departures have outpaced univariate changes across global lands. Sci. Rep. 10, 3891 (2020).
VanDerWal, J. et al. Focus on poleward shifts in species’ distribution underestimates the fingerprint of climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 3, 239–243 (2013).
Ordonez, A., Williams, J. W. & Svenning, J. C. Mapping climatic mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 1104–1109 (2016).
Hof, C., Levinsky, I., Araújo, M. B. & Rahbek, C. Rethinking species’ ability to cope with rapid climate change. Glob. Change Biol. 17, 2987–2990 (2011).
Brown, S. C., Wigley, T. M. L., Otto-Bliesner, B. L., Rahbek, C. & Fordham, D. A. Persistent Quaternary climate refugia are hospices for biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Nat. Clim. Change 10, 244–248 (2020).
Buizert, C. et al. Greenland temperature response to climate forcing during the last deglaciation. Science 345, 1177–1180 (2014).
Steffensen, J. P. et al. High-resolution Greenland ice core data show abrupt climate change happens in few years. Science 321, 680–684 (2008).
Jackson, S. T. & Overpeck, J. T. Responses of plant populations and communities to environmental changes of the late Quaternary. Paleobiology 26 (Suppl.), 194–220 (2000).
Prentice, I. C., Bartlein, P. J. & Webb, T. III. Vegetation and climate change in eastern North America since the last glacial maximum. Ecology 72, 2038–2056 (1991).
Giesecke, T., Brewer, S., Finsinger, W., Leydet, M. & Bradshaw, R. H. W. Patterns and dynamics of European vegetation change over the last 15,000 years. J. Biogeogr. 44, 1441–1456 (2017).
Ordonez, A. & Williams, J. W. Climatic and biotic velocities for woody taxa distributions over the last 16 000 years in eastern North America. Ecol. Lett. 16, 773–781 (2013).
Williams, J. W., Post, D. M., Cwynar, L. C., Lotter, A. F. & Levesque, A. J. Rapid and widespread vegetation responses to past climate change in the North Atlantic region. Geology 30, 971–974 (2002).
Tinner, W. & Lotter, A. F. Central European vegetation response to abrupt climate change at 8.2 ka. Geology 29, 551–554 (2001).
Juggins, S. Quantitative reconstructions in paleolimnology: new paradigm or sick science? Quat. Sci. Rev. 64, 20–32 (2013).
Ammann, B. et al. Responses to rapid warming at Termination 1a at Gerzensee (Central Europe): primary succession, albedo, soils, lake development, and ecological interactions. Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 391, 111–131 (2013).
Ammann, B., von Grafenstein, U. & van Raden, U. J. Biotic responses to rapid warming about 14,685 yr BP: introduction to a case study at Gerzensee (Switzerland). Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 391, 3–12 (2013).
Cotto, O. et al. A dynamic eco-evolutionary model predicts slow response of alpine plants to climate warming. Nat. Commun. 8, 15399 (2017).
Petitpierre, B. et al. Climatic niche shifts are rare among terrestrial plant invaders. Science 335, 1344–1348 (2012).
Hui, C., Roura-Pascual, N., Brotons, L., Robinson, R. A. & Evans, K. L. Flexible dispersal strategies in native and non-native ranges: environmental quality and the ‘good–stay, bad–disperse’ rule. Ecography 35, 1024–1032 (2012).
Grubb, P. J. The maintenance of species-richness in plant communities: the importance of the regeneration niche. Biol. Rev. 52, 107–145 (1977).
Jackson, S. T., Betancourt, J. L., Booth, R. K. & Gray, S. T. Ecology and the ratchet of events: climate variability, niche dimensions, and species distributions. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 19685–19692 (2009).
Hughes, T. P. et al. Global warming impairs stock–recruitment dynamics of corals. Nature 568, 387–390 (2019).
Stevens-Rumann, C. S. et al. Evidence for declining forest resilience to wildfires under climate change. Ecol. Lett. 21, 243–252 (2018).
Keeley, J. E., van Mantgem, P. & Falk, D. A. Fire, climate and changing forests. Nat. Plants 5, 774–775 (2019).
Raffa, K. F., Powell, E. N. & Townsend, P. A. Temperature-driven range expansion of an irruptive insect heightened by weakly coevolved plant defenses. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 2193–2198 (2013).
Hughes, T. P. et al. Spatial and temporal patterns of mass bleaching of corals in the Anthropocene. Science 359, 80–83 (2018).
Feeley, K. J. et al. Upslope migration of Andean trees. J. Biogeogr. 38, 783–791 (2011).
Ricklefs, R. E. & Latham, R. E. Intercontinental correlation of geographical ranges suggests stasis in ecological traits of relict genera of temperature perennial herbs. Am. Nat. 139, 1305–1321 (1992).
McCain, C. M. & King, S. R. B. Body size and activity times mediate mammalian responses to climate change. Glob. Change Biol. 20, 1760–1769 (2014).
Pither, J., Pickles, B. J., Simard, S. W., Ordonez, A. & Williams, J. W. Below-ground biotic interactions moderated the postglacial range dynamics of trees. New Phytol. 220, 1148–1160 (2018).
Lawler, J. J. & Olden, J. D. Reframing the debate over assisted colonization. Front. Ecol. Environ. 9, 569–574 (2011).
Schwartz, M. W. et al. Managed relocation: integrating the scientific, regulatory, and ethical challenges. BioScience 62, 732–743 (2012).
Van der Veken, S., Hermy, M., Vellend, M., Knapen, A. & Verheyen, K. Garden plants get a head start on climate change. Front. Ecol. Environ. 6, 212–216 (2008).
Svenning, J.-C. & Skov, F. Limited filling of the potential range in European tree species. Ecol. Lett. 7, 565–573 (2004).
Sax, D. F., Early, R. & Bellemare, J. Niche syndromes, species extinction risks, and management under climate change. Trends Ecol. Evol. 28, 517–523 (2013).
Kuussaari, M. et al. Extinction debt: a challenge for biodiversity conservation. Trends Ecol. Evol. 24, 564–571 (2009).
Norberg, J., Urban, M. C., Vellend, M., Klausmeier, C. A. & Loeuille, N. Eco-evolutionary responses of biodiversity to climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 747–751 (2012).
Wheeler, H. C., Høye, T. T., Schmidt, N. M., Svenning, J.-C. & Forchhammer, M. C. Phenological mismatch with abiotic conditions—implications for flowering in Arctic plants. Ecology 96, 775–787 (2015).
Beard, K. H., Kelsey, K. C., Leffler, A. J. & Welker, J. M. The missing angle: ecosystem consequences of phenological mismatch. Trends Ecol. Evol. 34, 885–888 (2019).
Chamberlain, C. J., Cook, B. I., de Cortazar Atauri, I. G. & Wolkovich, E. M. Rethinking false spring risk. Glob. Change Biol. 25, 2209–2220 (2019).
Wolkovich, E. M., Cook, B. I., McLauchlan, K. K. & Davies, T. J. Temporal ecology in the Anthropocene. Ecol. Lett. 17, 1365–1379 (2014).
Pagel, J. et al. Mismatches between demographic niches and geographic distributions are strongest in poorly dispersed and highly persistent plant species. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 3663–3669 (2020).
Komatsu, K. J. et al. Global change effects on plant communities are magnified by time and the number of global change factors imposed. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 17867–17873 (2019).
Fadrique, B. et al. Widespread but heterogeneous responses of Andean forests to climate change. Nature 564, 207–212 (2018).
Talluto, M. V., Boulangeat, I., Vissault, S., Thuiller, W. & Gravel, D. Extinction debt and colonization credit delay range shifts of eastern North American trees. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 1, 0182 (2017).
Zhu, K., Woodall, C. W. & Clark, J. S. Failure to migrate: lack of tree range expansion in response to climate change. Glob. Change Biol. 18, 1042–1052 (2012).
Bertrand, R. et al. Changes in plant community composition lag behind climate warming in lowland forests. Nature 479, 517–520 (2011).
Bocsi, T. et al. Plants’ native distributions do not reflect climatic tolerance. Divers. Distrib. 22, 615–624 (2016).
Early, R. & Sax, D. F. Climatic niche shifts between species’ native and naturalized ranges raise concern for ecological forecasts during invasions and climate change. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 23, 1356–1365 (2014).
Perret, D. L., Leslie, A. B. & Sax, D. F. Naturalized distributions show that climatic disequilibrium is structured by niche size in pines (Pinus L.). Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 28, 429–441 (2019).
Blonder, B. et al. Linking environmental filtering and disequilibrium to biogeography with a community climate framework. Ecology 96, 972–985 (2015).
Knight, C. A. et al. Community assembly and climate mismatch in Late-Quaternary eastern North American pollen assemblages. Am. Nat. 195, 166–180 (2020).
Butterfield, B. J., Anderson, R. S., Holmgren, C. A. & Betancourt, J. L. Extinction debt and delayed colonization have had comparable but unique effects on plant community–climate lags since the Last Glacial Maximum. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 28, 1067–1077 (2019).
Graham, R. W. et al. Timing and causes of a middle Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 9310–9314 (2016).
Woods, K. D. & Davis, M. B. Paleoecology of range limits: beech in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Ecology 70, 681–696 (1989).
Jackson, S. T. et al. Inferring local to regional changes in forest composition from Holocene macrofossils and pollen of a small lake in central Upper Michigan. Quat. Sci. Rev. 98, 60–73 (2014).
Seeley, M., Goring, S. & Williams, J. W. Testing hypotheses about environmental and dispersal controls on Fagus grandifolia distributions in the upper Midwest Great Lakes region. J. Biogeogr. 46, 405–419 (2019).
Birks, H. J. B. & Birks, H. H. Biological responses to rapid climate change at the Younger Dryas—Holocene transition at Kråkenes, western Norway. Holocene 18, 19–30 (2008).
Ammann, B. et al. Vegetation responses to rapid warming and to minor climatic fluctuations during the Late-Glacial Interstadial (GI-1) at Gerzensee (Switzerland). Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 391, 40–59 (2013).
Svenning, J.-C. & Skov, F. Could the tree diversity pattern in Europe be generated by postglacial dispersal limitation? Ecol. Lett. 10, 453–460 (2007).
Sandel, B. et al. The influence of late Quaternary climate-change velocity on species endemism. Science 334, 660–664 (2011).
Feng, G. et al. Species and phylogenetic endemism in angiosperm trees across the Northern Hemisphere are jointly shaped by modern climate and glacial–interglacial climate change. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 28, 1393–1402 (2019).
Richardson, D. M. et al. Naturalization and invasion of alien plants: concepts and definitions. Divers. Distrib. 6, 93–107 (2000).
Sakai, A. K. et al. The population biology of invasive species. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 32, 305–332 (2001).
Hui, C. & Richardson, D. M. Invasion Dynamics (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017).
Kowarik, I. in Plant Invasions. General Aspects and Special Problems (eds Pysek, P. et al.) 15–39 (SPB Academic Publishing, 1995).
Bruce, K. A., Cameron, G. N. & Harcombe, P. A. Initiation of a new woodland type on the Texas Coastal Prairie by the Chinese tallow tree (Sapium sebiferum (L.) Roxb.). Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 122, 215–225 (1995).
Castro, S. A., Figueroa, J. A., Muñoz-Schick, M. & Jaksic, F. M. Minimum residence time, biogeographical origin, and life cycle as determinants of the geographical extent of naturalized plants in continental Chile. Divers. Distrib. 11, 183–191 (2005).
Hoffmann, J. H. & Moran, V. C. The invasive weed Sesbania punicea in South Africa and prospects for its biological control. S. Afr. J. Sci. 84, 740–472 (1988).
Byers, J. E. et al. Invasion expansion: time since introduction best predicts global ranges of marine invaders. Sci. Rep. 5, 12436 (2015).
Phillips, M. L., Murray, B. R., Leishman, M. R. & Ingram, R. The naturalization to invasion transition: are there introduction-history correlates of invasiveness in exotic plants of Australia? Austral Ecol. 35, 695–703 (2010).
Scott, J. K. & Panetta, F. D. Predicting the Australian weed status of southern African plants. J. Biogeogr. 20, 87–93 (1993).
Arroyo, M. T. K., Rozzi, R., Simonetti, J. A., Marquet, P. & Sallaberry, M. in Hotspots: Earth’s Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecosystems (eds Mittermeier, R. A. et al.) 161–171 (Cemex, Conservation International, 1999).
Zarnetske, P. L., Skelly, D. K. & Urban, M. C. Biotic multipliers of climate change. Science 336, 1516–1518 (2012).
Ordonez, A. & Williams, J. W. Projected climate reshuffling based on multivariate climate-availability, climate-analog, and climate-velocity analyses: implications for community disaggregation. Clim. Change 119, 659–675 (2013).
Zohner, C. M. et al. Late-spring frost risk between 1959 and 2017 decreased in North America but increased in Europe and Asia. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 12192–12200 (2020).
Renner, S. S. & Zohner, C. M. Climate change and phenological mismatch in trophic interactions among plants, insects, and vertebrates. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 49, 165–182 (2018).
Turner, M. G. et al. Climate change, ecosystems, and abrupt change: science priorities. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 375, 20190105 (2020).
Rietkerk, M., Dekker, S. C., de Ruiter, P. C. & van de Koppel, J. Self-organized patchiness and catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Science 305, 1926–1929 (2004).
Calder, W. J. & Shuman, B. N. Extensive wildfires, climate change, and an abrupt state change in subalpine ribbon forests, Colorado. Ecology 98, 2585–2600 (2017).
Shuman, B. N., Marsicek, J., Oswald, W. W. & Foster, D. R. Predictable hydrological and ecological responses to Holocene North Atlantic variability. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 5985–5990 (2019).
Allison, T. D., Moeller, R. E. & Davis, M. B. Pollen in laminated sediments provides evidence of mid-Holocene forest pathogen outbreak. Ecology 67, 1101–1105 (1986).
Ramiadantsoa, T., Stegner, M. A., Williams, J. W. & Ives, A. R. The potential role of intrinsic processes in generating abrupt and quasi-synchronous tree declines during the Holocene. Ecology 100, e02579 (2019).
Seddon, A. W. R., Froyd, C. A., Witkowski, A. & Willis, K. J. A quantitative framework for analysis of regime shifts in a Galápagos coastal lagoon. Ecology 95, 3046–3055 (2014).
Gray, S. T., Betancourt, J. L., Jackson, S. J. & Eddy, R. G. Role of multidecadal climatic variability in a range extension of pinyon pine. Ecology 87, 1124–1130 (2006).
Lyford, M. E., Jackson, S. T., Betancourt, J. L. & Gray, S. T. Influence of landscape structure and climate variability on a late Holocene plant migration. Ecol. Monogr. 73, 567–583 (2003).
Tinner, W. & Lotter, A. F. Holocene expansions of Fagus silvatica and Abies alba in Central Europe: where are we after eight decades of debate? Quat. Sci. Rev. 25, 526–549 (2006).
Saltré, F. A. et al. Climate or migration: what limited European beech post-glacial colonization? Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 22, 1217–1227 (2013).
Ruosch, M. et al. Past and future evolution of Abies alba forests in Europe – comparison of a dynamic vegetation model with palaeo data and observations. Glob. Change Biol. 22, 727–740 (2016).
Danz, N. P., Frelich, L. E., Reich, P. B. & Niemi, G. J. Do vegetation boundaries display smooth or abrupt spatial transitions along environmental gradients? Evidence from the prairie–forest biome boundary of historic Minnesota, USA. J. Veg. Sci. 24, 1129–1140 (2013).
Grimm, E. C. Fire and other factors controlling the Big Woods vegetation of Minnesota in the mid-nineteenth century. Ecol. Monogr. 54, 291–311 (1984).
Staver, A. C., Archibald, S. & Levin, S. A. The global extent and determinants of savanna and forest as alternative biome states. Science 334, 230–232 (2011).
Thomson, J. A. et al. Extreme temperatures, foundation species, and abrupt ecosystem change: an example from an iconic seagrass ecosystem. Glob. Change Biol. 21, 1463–1474 (2015).
Teskey, R. et al. Responses of tree species to heat waves and extreme heat events. Plant Cell Environ. 38, 1699–1712 (2015).
Hansen, W. D. & Turner, M. G. Origins of abrupt change? Postfire subalpine conifer regeneration declines nonlinearly with warming and drying. Ecol. Monogr. 89, e01340 (2019).
Bestelmeyer, B. T. et al. Analysis of abrupt transitions in ecological systems. Ecosphere 2, 129 (2011).
Lenton, T. M. Early warning of climate tipping points. Nat. Clim. Change 1, 201–209 (2011).
Hastings, A. & Wysham, D. B. Regime shifts in ecological systems can occur with no warning. Ecol. Lett. 13, 464–472 (2010).
Boettiger, C. & Hastings, A. Quantifying limits to detection of early warning for critical transitions. J. R. Soc. Interface 9, 2527–2539 (2012).
Millar, C. I., Stephenson, N. L. & Stephens, S. L. Climate change and forests of the future: managing in the face of uncertainty. Ecol. Appl. 17, 2145–2151 (2007).
Choi, Y. D. Restoration ecology to the future: a call for new paradigm. Restor. Ecol. 15, 351–353 (2007).
Corlett, R. T. Restoration, reintroduction, and rewilding in a changing world. Trends Ecol. Evol. 31, 453–462 (2016).
Sprugel, D. G. Disturbance, equilibrium, and environmental variability: what is ‘Natural’ vegetation in a changing environment? Biol. Conserv. 58, 1–18 (1991).
Perino, A. et al. Rewilding complex ecosystems. Science 364, eaav5570 (2019).
Jackson, S. T. & Hobbs, R. J. Ecological restoration in the light of ecological history. Science 325, 567–569 (2009).
Radeloff, V. C. et al. The rise of novelty in ecosystems. Ecol. Appl. 25, 2051–2068 (2015).
Truitt, A. M. et al. What is novel about novel ecosystems: managing change in an ever-changing world. Environ. Manag. 55, 1217–1226 (2015).
Murcia, C. et al. A critique of the ‘novel ecosystem’ concept. Trends Ecol. Evol. 29, 548–553 (2014).
Ricciardi, A. & Simberloff, D. Assisted colonization is not a viable conservation strategy. Trends Ecol. Evol. 24, 248–253 (2009).
Svenning, J.-C. Proactive conservation and restoration of botanical diversity in the Anthropocene’s “rambunctious garden”. Am. J. Bot. 105, 963–966 (2018).
Jepson, P. Recoverable Earth: a twenty-first century environmental narrative. Ambio 48, 123–130 (2019).
Hoegh-Guldberg, O. et al. Assisted colonization and rapid climate change. Science 321, 345–346 (2008).
van Oppen, M. J. H., Oliver, J. K., Putnam, H. M. & Gates, R. D. Building coral reef resilience through assisted evolution. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 2307–2313 (2015).
Willis, K. J. & MacDonald, G. M. Long-term ecological records and their relevance to climate change predictions for a warmer world. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 42, 267–287 (2011).
Farley, S. S., Dawson, A., Goring, S. J. & Williams, J. W. Situating ecology as a big data science: Current advances, challenges, and solutions. BioScience 68, 563–576 (2018).
Brown, T. B. et al. Using phenocams to monitor our changing Earth: toward a global phenocam network. Front. Ecol. Environ. 14, 84–93 (2016).
Clark, J. S. et al. Ecological forecasts: an emerging imperative. Science 293, 657–660 (2001).
Dietze, M. C. et al. Iterative near-term ecological forecasting: needs, opportunities, and challenges. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 1424–1432 (2018).
Dietze, M. C. Ecological Forecasting (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017).
Bauer, P., Thorpe, A. & Brunet, G. The quiet revolution of numerical weather prediction. Nature 525, 47–55 (2015).
Thomas, S. M., Griffiths, S. W. & Ormerod, S. J. Adapting streams for climate change using riparian broadleaf trees and its consequences for stream salmonids. Freshw. Biol. 60, 64–77 (2015).
Greenwood, O., Mossman, H. L., Suggitt, A. J., Curtis, R. J. & Maclean, I. M. D. Using in situ management to conserve biodiversity under climate change. J. Appl. Ecol. 53, 885–894 (2016).
Carpenter, S. R. & Turner, M. G. Hares and tortoises: interactions of fast and slow variables in ecosystems. Ecosystems 3, 495–497 (2000).
Harris, I., Jones, P., Osborn, T. & Lister, D. Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations–the CRU TS3.10 dataset. Int. J. Climatol. 34, 623–642 (2014).
Bureau of Reclamation Downscaled CMIP3 and CMIP5 Climate and Hydrology Projections: Release of Hydrology Projections, Comparison with Preceding Information, and Summary of User Needs (US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Technical Services Center, 2014).
Delcourt, H. R. & Delcourt, P. A. Quaternary Ecology: A Paleoecological Perspective (Chapman & Hall, 1991).
IPCC in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (eds Field, C. B. et al.) 1–32 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
Bonan, G. B. Forests and climate change: forcings, feedbacks, and the climate benefits of forests. Science 320, 1444–1449 (2008).
McDowell, P. F., Webb, T. III & Bartlein, P. J. in The Earth as Transformed by Human Action (eds Turner, B. L. II et al.) 143–162 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
Delcourt, P. A. & Delcourt, H. R. Long-Term Forest Dynamics of the Temperate Zone: A Case Study of Late-Quaternary Forests in Eastern North America (Springer-Verlag, 1987).
Turner, M. G., Dale, V. H. & Gardner, R. H. Predicting across scales: theory development and testing. Landsc. Ecol. 3, 245–252 (1989).
Kidwell, S. M. Biology in the Anthropocene: challenges and insights from young fossil records. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 12, 4922–4929 (2015).
National Research Council Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises (National Academy Press, 2002).
Rahmstorf, S. in Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences (eds Steele, J. et al.) 1–6 (Academic Press, 2001).
Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S., Foley, J. A., Folke, C. & Walker, B. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature 413, 591–596 (2001).
Staver, A. C., Archibald, S. & Levin, S. Tree cover in sub-Saharan Africa: rainfall and fire constrain forest and savanna as alternative stable states. Ecology 92, 1063–1072 (2011).
Andersen, T., Carstensen, J., Hernández-Garcia, E. & Duarte, C. M. Ecological thresholds and regime shifts: approaches to identification. Trends Ecol. Evol. 24, 49–57 (2009).
Scheffer, M. & Carpenter, S. R. Catastrophic regime shifts in ecosystems: linking theory to observation. Trends Ecol. Evol. 18, 648–656 (2003).
Claussen, M. Late Quaternary vegetation-climate feedbacks. Clim. Past 5, 203–216 (2009).
Liu, Z., Notaro, M. & Gallimore, R. Indirect vegetation-soil moisture feedback with application to Holocene North Africa climate. Glob. Change Biol. 16, 1733–1743 (2010).
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (DEB-1855781) and the UW2020 initiative of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, a VILLUM Investigator project funded by VILLUM FONDEN (grant no.16549), and the Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond Grant (AUFF-F-2018-7-8). This manuscript was improved by discussion with A. George and other members of the Williams Lab. The manuscript was improved by comments from T. Webb.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
J.W.W., A.O. and J.-C.S. jointly contributed to paper planning and discussion. J.W.W. and A.O. developed figures. J.W.W. led writing with contributions from A.O. and J.-C.S.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Table 1 and references.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Williams, J.W., Ordonez, A. & Svenning, JC. A unifying framework for studying and managing climate-driven rates of ecological change. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 17–26 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01344-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01344-5
This article is cited by
-
Reassessment of the risks of climate change for terrestrial ecosystems
Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024)
-
Identification of landscape features structuring movement connectivity for Namibian elephants
Landscape Ecology (2024)
-
Panel-based assessment of ecosystem condition as a platform for adaptive and knowledge driven management
Environmental Management (2024)
-
Overconfidence in climate overshoot
Nature (2024)
-
A predictive timeline of wildlife population collapse
Nature Ecology & Evolution (2023)
