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Ecotoxicological Methodologies to Evaluate Biomarkers at Different Scales in Neotropical Anurans
Published on: April 28, 2023
A review on the methods of determining ecological thresholds
Li-Ping Hou1,2,3, Ping He1,2,3, Xiao-Shan Fan1,2,3
1Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China.
Abstract:
The drastic changes or threshold phenomena of ecosystems in response to environmental changes are main research focuses in ecology. However, the difficulty in quantitative detection of ecological thresholds hinders the further research progress and application of this topic. Based on typical cases, we analzyed the driving-response mechanism of S-shaped curve type, subsidy-stress type, step type of the potential ecological thresholds. Seven methods to determine ecological thre-shold were summarized, including locally weighted scatterplot smoothing, piecewise regression, Gaussian model, change-point analyzer, regime shift detection, threshold indicator taxa analysis and system dynamics simulation model. The advantages, disadvantages and applicability of those methods were also addressed. This study could provide references for quantitative detection of ecological threshold.
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