Structural controllability and management of cascading regime shifts

TL;DR

This paper applies network controllability principles to ecosystems, revealing how interconnected regime shifts can be easier or harder to manage depending on shared drivers and feedbacks, emphasizing the importance of network structure and coupling.

Contribution

It introduces a network controllability framework to analyze the management of coupled ecosystem regime shifts, highlighting factors influencing control difficulty.

Findings

Coupled regime shifts are easier to manage with shared drivers.

New feedbacks in coupled systems can increase management difficulty.

Network structure and coupling strength significantly affect controllability.

Abstract

Abrupt transitions in ecosystems can be interconnected, raising challenges for science and management in identifying sufficient interventions to prevent them or recover from undesirable shifts. Here we use principles of network controllability to explore how difficult it is to manage coupled regime shifts. We find that coupled regime shifts are easier to manage when they share drivers, but can become harder to manage if new feedbacks are formed when coupled. Simulation experiments showed that both network structure and coupling strength matter in our ability to manage interconnected systems. This theoretical observation calls for an empirical assessment of cascading regime shifts in ecosystems and warns about our limited ability to control cascading effects.