Can Natures Leading Indicators Presage Environmental Disaster?
MADISON — Economists use leading indicators — the drivers of economic performance – to take the temperature of the economy and predict the future. Now, in a new study, scientists take a page from the social science handbook and use leading indicators of the environment to presage the potential collapse of ecosystems. The study, published today (Jan. 5) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by two ecologists and an economist, suggests it may be possible to use nature’s leading indicators to avert environmental disaster. Ecosystems worldwide — lakes, ocean fisheries, coral reefs, forests, wetlands and rangelands — are under constant and escalating pressure from humans and many are on the brink of collapse, according to Stephen R. Carpenter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of zoology and an author of the new study. “It’s a big problem because they are very hard to predict. It is hard to get a handle on statistically,” says Carpenter of what ecologists call “re
