Directional Changes in Ecological Communities and Social-Ecological Systems: A Framework for Prediction Based on Alaskan Examples

Abstract: In this article we extend the theory of community prediction by presenting seven hypotheses for predicting community structure in a directionally changing world. The first three address well-studied community responses to environmental and ecological change: ecological communities are most likely to exhibit threshold changes in structure when perturbations cause large changes in limiting soil or sediment resources, dominant or keystone species, or attributes of disturbance regime that influence community recruitment. Four additional hypotheses address social-ecological interactions and apply to both ecological communities and social-ecological systems. Human responsiveness to short-term and local costs and benefits often [...]