Tipping points – where systems shift radically and potentially irreversibly into a different state – have received considerable attention in ecology. Although there is convincing evidence that human drivers can cause regime shifts at local and regional scales, the increasingly invoked concept of planetary scale tipping points in the terrestrial biosphere remains unconfirmed. By evaluating potential mechanisms and drivers, we conclude that spatial heterogeneity in drivers and responses, and lack of strong continental interconnectivity, probably induce relatively smooth changes at the global scale, without an expectation of marked tipping patterns. This implies that identifying critical points along global continua of drivers might be unfeasible and that characterizing global biotic change with single aggregates is inapt.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Biological Sciences
Research Group:	Other biological sciences
Research Field:	Global change biology
Objective Division:	Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards
Objective Group:	Environmental policy, legislation and standards
Objective Field:	Sustainability indicators
UTAS Author:	Brook, BW (Professor Barry Brook)
ID Code:	97928
Year Published:	2013
Web of Science® Times Cited:	143
Deposited By:	Biological Sciences
Deposited On:	2015-01-21
Last Modified:	2017-11-01
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