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Ecosystem Antifragility: Beyond Integrity and Resilience

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Ecosystem Antifragility: Beyond Integrity and Resilience A peer-reviewed version of this preprint was published in PeerJ on 11 February 2020. View the peer-reviewed version (peerj.com/articles/8533), which is the preferred citable publication unless you specifically need to cite this preprint. Equihua M, Espinosa Aldama M, Gershenson C, López-Corona O, Munguía M, Pérez-Maqueo O, Ramírez-Carrillo E. 2020. Ecosystem antifragility: beyond integrity and resilience. PeerJ 8:e8533 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8533 Ecosystem antifragility: Beyond integrity and resilience Miguel Equihua Zamora 1 , Mariana Espinosa 2 , Carlos Gershenson 3, 4, 5 , Oliver López-Corona Corresp., 4, 6, 7 , Mariana Munguia 8 , Octavio Pérez-Maqueo 1 , Elvia Ramírez-Carrillo 9 1 Red ambiente y sostenibilidad, Instituto de Ecología A.C, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico 2 Doctorado en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, UAM-Cuajimalpa., cdmx, cdmx, Mexico 3 IIMAS, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, cdmx, Mexico 4 Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad (C3), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, cdmx, cdmx, Mexico 5 ITMO University, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation, St. Petersburg, Russia 6 Cátedras CONACyT, Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO), cdmx, Mexico 7 Red ambiente y sostenibilidad, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico 8 Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO), CDMX, Mexico 9 Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, cdmx, Mexico Corresponding Author: Oliver López-Corona Email address: [email protected] We review the concept of ecosystem resilience in its relation to ecosystem integrity from an information theory approach. We summarize the literature on the subject identifying three main narratives: ecosystem properties that enable them to be more resilient; ecosystem response to perturbations; and complexity. We also include original ideas with theoretical and quantitative developments with application examples. The main contribution is a new way to rethink resilience, that is mathematically formal and easy to evaluate heuristically in real-world applications: ecosystem antifragility. An ecosystem is antifragile if it benefits from environmental variability. Antifragility therefore goes beyond robustness or resilience because while resilient/robust systems are merely perturbation- resistant, antifragile structures not only withstand stress but also benefit from it. PeerJ Preprints | https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27813v1 | CC BY 4.0 Open Access | rec: 21 Jun 2019, publ: 21 Jun 2019 1 Ecosystem Antifragility: Beyond Integrity 2 and Resilience. 2,* 8,* 3,5,6,* 1,2,3,* 3 M. Equihua , M. Espinosa , C.Gershenson , O. Lopez-Corona´ , 7,* 2,* 4,* 4 M. Mungu´ıa , O. Perez-Maqueo´ , and E. Ram´ırez-Carrillo 1 5 Catedras´ CONACyT, Comision´ Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la 6 Biodiversidad (CONABIO), CDMX, Mexico´ 2 7 Red ambiente y sostenibilidad, Instituto de Ecolog´ıaA.C., Xalapa, Mexico´ 3 8 Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad (C3), Universidad Nacional Autonoma´ de 9 Mexico,´ CDMX, Mexico´ 4 10 Facultad de Psicolog´ıa,Universidad Nacional Autonoma´ de Mexico,´ CDMX, Mexico´ 5 11 IIMAS, Universidad Nacional Autonoma´ de Mexico,´ CDMX, Mexico´ 6 12 ITMO University, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation. 7 13 Comision´ Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO), CDMX, 14 Mexico´ 8 15 Doctorado en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, UAM-Cuajimalpa. 16 Corresponding author: 17 Following the Hardy-Littleton rule, all authors will appear in alphabetical order. And all are ∗ 18 corresponding authors 19 Email address: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; 20 [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; 21 [email protected] 22 ABSTRACT 23 We review the concept of ecosystem resilience in its relation to ecosystem integrity from an information 24 theory approach. We summarize the literature on the subject identifying three main narratives: ecosystem 25 properties that enable them to be more resilient; ecosystem response to perturbations; and complexity. 26 We also include original ideas with theoretical and quantitative developments with application examples. 27 The main contribution is a new way to rethink resilience, that is mathematically formal and easy to 28 evaluate heuristically in real-world applications: ecosystem antifragility. An ecosystem is antifragile if 29 it benefits from environmental variability. Antifragility therefore goes beyond robustness or resilience 30 because while resilient/robust systems are merely perturbation-resistant, antifragile structures not only 31 withstand stress but also benefit from it. 32 1 INTRODUCTION 33 Sustainable development needs to preserve the structure and functioning of natural ecosystems, i.e. their 34 integrity, as a Sine qua non condition. In previous work [25] an operational framework has been 35 developed to quantify ecosystem integrity as well as viable standards useful for managing the way people 36 intervene ecosystems, promoting development along sustainable avenues. 37 Humans are starting to be recognized as an overwhelming forcing factor modulating biosphere 38 dynamics. In this view, the Earth system can be interpreted as entering in a geological era that can 39 be called the Anthropocene [99] the Technocene [62] or even Capitalocene [41], depending on the 40 conceptual stance adopted. Because of this driving influence of human decisions, there has been long 41 interest in understanding and measure the way ecosystems recover (or not) from human perturbations. To 42 operationalize sustainability, we require working definitions of this ecosystem ability and metrics to asses 43 it, in addition to ecosystem integrity (as a component of a likely state variable accounting for the amount 44 of natural capital assets: condition × extension). The recovery property has already been encapsulated 45 into the ecosystem resilience concept. Here, we propose that information theory is a suitable framework 46 to encompass both ecosystem integrity and resilience. 47 According to [25], numerous studies have aimed to find a suitable and inclusive definition of ecological 48 integrity; however, no general consensus has been achieved to date. In their work, Equihua and co- 49 workers embrace a complex systems approach in which ecosystems are considered as self-organized 50 entities constrained in their structure (including biological composition or biodiversity), and function by 51 thermodynamic dissipative system properties [52, 87, 67, 72] and evolutionary processes [61]. 52 The concept of ecosystem resilience was first introduced by Holling [46] to portray the persistence of 53 natural structures in the presence of environmental stressors due to natural or anthropogenic triggers. In 54 his seminal work, Holling follows a system dynamics analysis. There, resilience concept is defined as: 55 “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing a change so as to still 56 retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks” [109]. Nevertheless, resilience 57 or stability, which is commonly used as synonym, have at least 163 different definitions (grouped in at 58 least 70 concepts of stability/resilience) [37]. For example, Saint-Beat´ and co-workers [91] summarize 59 resilience and others related concepts often used interchangeably as follows: 60 • Resilience is the rate at which a system returns after a disturbance to the equilibrium state [20, 61 Pimm]. Long return time is equivalent to low resilience. A community’s resilience relies on the 62 least resilient species (the slowest to return to equilibrium). This definition of resilience corresponds 63 to the ‘engineering resilience’ defined by [47] And assumes that there is only one balance or a 64 stable state [38]. 65 • Persistence is the time for a variable to remain in the same state before changing to a different one 66 [Pimm]. Persistence is a measure of a system’s capacity to preserve itself over time. [63] 67 • Resistance is described as the capacity of an ecosystem in the presence of external disturbance to 68 preserve its initial state. [43]. Only small changes (in amount and intensity) within an ecosystem 69 correspond to high resistance. This concept is similar to the ‘ecological resilience’ defined by [47] 70 and Suggests that various stable states exist. 71 • Robustness relates to the durability of the stability of the environment. Robustness is then a measure 72 of the amount of disturbance an ecosystem can endure before it changes to a different state. [63].The 73 more robust the food web is, the more stable it is. 74 In this paper, we ascertain that both integrity and resilience frameworks can be formalized using 75 information theory. The second law of thermodynamics is probabilistic by its very nature, because its 76 formulation involves a probabilistic description of the state of a system [78]. It is customary in information 77 theory to relate the Shannon information of a random variable X (microscopic state of a physical system) 78 with the thermodynamic entropy of the system. This relation can be expressed as H(X) = −k∑[p(x)log p(x)], (1) x 79 where p(x) is the probability density and assuming k as the Boltzmann’s constant. Even more, once 80 the connection between entropy (thermodynamics) and Shannon information (information theory) is 81 made, we are able to calculate self-organization as the complement (1 − H(X)) of Shannon information 82
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