Regime Shifts DataBase

Large persistent changes in ecosystem services

The trend of land use changing from livestock farming to game farming in the Eastern Cape has been on the rise since the 1980s (Lloyd et al., 2002), and has major implications for biodiversity and a wide variety of ecosystem services and human wellbeing (Sun & Müller, 2014). The growth in game farming was boosted by free market policies and renewed conservation interests in the 1970s, coupled with the introduction of stock reduction schemes after the prolonged drought of the 1960s, whic...

In 2000 the Zimbabwean government initiated the Fast Track Land Reform program which sought to address historical injustices and racial imbalances in the ownership of land stemming from the colonial era (Moyo, 2011a). Under the Fast Track Land Reform program, over 10 million hectares of land were redistributed amongst 146 000 smallholder farm families and 23 000 medium-scale farms (Scoones, Mavedzenge, Murimbarimba & Sukume, 2018), with the small holder farms (A1 resettlements) and medi...

The eastern parts of the USA were once dominated by American chestnut tree forests (Castanea dentata), making up 40-85 % of canopy cover. However, an invasive alien fungus known as chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) was accidently introduced to New York in the early 1900s at a time of significantly increased global trade. American chestnut trees had no resistance to this Asian fungus and it spread rapidly across the eastern coast. By the 1930s it had reached the southern Application fore...

 A shift from polar to temperate primary production (PP) patterns has been detected in the Arctic Ocean. Following a regime shift in the North Atlantic in 1995, similar structural changes are now occurring in Arctic waters. Rapid warming of atmospheric and oceanic temperatures has caused a near year-on-year decline in the extent and thickness of summer sea ice since 1979 (NSIDC 2014). Anthropogenic climatic change has extended the growing season and delayed August freeze-up through a declin...

A regime shift occurred on the west coast of Svalbard in 1996 and 2000; the former Arctic benthos was mainly constituted by red calcareous algae and filter feeders whereas the present subarctic benthos is dominated by macroalgae. The main drivers of this shift are increases in sea surface temperature and inflow of light that are both due to global warming and changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation. Changes in benthos could impact other trophic levels, potentially affecting commercial fisherie...