The inevitability of surprise in agroecosystems

This is a simple model of competition between noxious and benigne weeds in an agroecosystem based on predator-prey dynamics. The interesting aspect of this model is that it demonstrates the inevitability of surprises in system behavior - meaning that for some systems, early warning signals (e.g, increased variance or autocorrelatin) are almost non-existent prior to critical transitions in systems. The reference article, Vandermeer (2011), gives the following overview. \"Many critical transformations of ecosystems contain advanced signals of their imminence, but it is also true that many critical transformations can be shown to contain no such signal, at least with the sorts of data normally available to ?eld workers. This paper explores some generalized theoretical structures and distinguishes  between  those  that  may  provide  a  signal that  could  be   used to predict  a  critical transformation and those that, by their very nature, do  not provide such a clue. I argue that it is almost certain that such completely unpredictable structures will sometimes emerge from systems that tend to be   as   complicated  as   agroecosystems,  in   both  their  natural  and  social   sciences  manifestations. Precaution should thus be  taken when designing agroecosystems\".

Reference

Vandermeer, J. (2011). The inevitability of surprise in agroecosystems. Ecological Complexity, 8(4), 377–382. doi:10.1016/j.ecocom.2011.10.001