title: Detecting spatial regimes in ecosystems.
abstract: Research on early warning indicators has generally focused on assessing temporal transitions with limited application of these methods to detecting spatial regimes. Traditional spatial boundary detection procedures that result in ecoregion maps are typically based on ecological potential (i.e. potential vegetation), and often fail to account for ongoing changes due to stressors such as land use change and climate change and their effects on plant and animal communities. We use Fisher information, an information theory-based method, on both terrestrial and aquatic animal data (U.S. Breeding Bird Survey and marine zooplankton) to identify ecological boundaries, and compare our results to traditional early warning indicators, conventional ecoregion maps and multivariate analyses such as nMDS and cluster analysis. We successfully detected spatial regimes and transitions in both terrestrial and aquatic systems using Fisher information. Furthermore, Fisher information provided explicit spatial information about community change that is absent from other multivariate approaches. Our results suggest that defining spatial regimes based on animal communities may better reflect ecological reality than do traditional ecoregion maps, especially in our current era of rapid and unpredictable ecological change.
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 103 Hardin Hall, 3310 Holdrege St., NE 68583, USA.
authors.forename: Shana M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Sundstrom
authors.affiliation: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, OH 45268, USA.
authors.forename: Tarsha
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Eason
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology-Centre for Biomedical Research, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC V8P 5C2, Canada.
authors.forename: R John
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.affiliation: Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Box 7050, SE- 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: David G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Angeler
authors.affiliation: Zoological Society of London, Regents Park, London NW1 4RY, UK.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Barichievy
authors.affiliation: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, OH 45268, USA.
authors.forename: Ahjond S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Garmestani
authors.affiliation: Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK.
authors.forename: Nicholas A J
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Graham
authors.affiliation: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bloomington, MN 55437-1003, USA.
authors.forename: Dean
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Granholm
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
authors.forename: Lance
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gunderson
authors.affiliation: Region 3 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, La Crosse, WI 54603, USA.
authors.forename: Melinda
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Knutson
authors.affiliation: Centre for Marine Socioecology, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart TAS 7000, Australia.
authors.forename: Kirsty L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Nash
authors.affiliation: National Research Council, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, Ohio 45268, USA.
authors.forename: Trisha
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Spanbauer
authors.affiliation: National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA.
authors.forename: Craig A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Stow
authors.affiliation: U.S. Geological Survey - Nebraska Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583, USA.
authors.forename: Craig R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Allen
mesh_terms: D063147:Animal Distribution; D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds / Q000502:physiology*; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D015048:Zooplankton / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Boundary detection; Fisher information; community change; regime shifts; spatial regimes; spatial resilience