Study
Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems
Scheffer, Marten; Carpenter, Steve; Foley, Jonathan A.; Folke, Carl; Walker, Brian
Nature, 2001
Reviews systems in which gradual change in a driver produces little response until a threshold, after which the system shifts abruptly to a contrasting state maintained by feedbacks — and in which reversing the driver does not reverse the shift.
- Studied in
- Plantae, Animalia
- Sample size
- review across lakes, reefs, rangelands and woodlands
Shallow lakes, coral reefs, rangelands and woodlands show evidence of alternative states with abrupt transitions and hysteresis, so that restoring prior conditions is insufficient to restore the prior state.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Ecosystems can possess alternative stable states, and gradual pressure can produce sudden and hard-to-reverse change.
How NatureHQ reads it
The record behind the site’s refusal of casual tipping-point language, and also the reason the concept must not be dismissed. Alternative states with hysteresis are well evidenced in shallow lakes in particular. What is not established is that any given system has them, or where its threshold is — and "tipping point" is used most confidently about systems where neither has been shown.
- Evidence quality varies greatly between the systems reviewed; shallow lakes are the best case and others much weaker.
- Demonstrating a threshold usually requires crossing it, which makes prediction hard and post-hoc explanation easy.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Ecological succession
Vegetation change is contingent, not a march towards a proper endpoint. The climax community was an early-twentieth-century idea, and modern ecology treats communities as coincidences of individual species’ tolerances.
Resilience and regime shifts
Returning quickly from a small knock is stability. Absorbing a large one without reorganising is resilience. They are independent — and suppressing small disturbances can reduce the size of shock a system can take.
Published by: Nature PortfolioPublished in a Nature Portfolio journal.
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-04.