Data from: Vegetation recovery in tidal marshes reveals critical slowing down under increased inundation

A declining rate of recovery following disturbance has been proposed as an important early warning for impending tipping points in complex systems. Despite extensive theoretical and laboratory studies, this ‘critical slowing down’ remains largely untested in the complex settings of real-world ecosystems. Here, we provide both observational and experimental support of critical slowing down along natural stress gradients in tidal marsh ecosystems. Time series of aerial images of European marsh development reveal a consistent lengthening of recovery time as inundation stress increases. We corroborate this finding with transplantation experiments in European and North American tidal marshes. In particular, our results emphasize the power of direct observational or experimental measures of recovery over indirect statistical signatures, such as spatial variance or autocorrelation. Our results indicate that the phenomenon of critical slowing down can provide a powerful tool to probe the resilience of natural ecosystems.扰动后恢复速率的衰减现象，已被提出可作为复杂系统中即将发生临界点的重要早期预警信号。尽管已有大量理论与实验室研究，但这一临界慢化（critical slowing down）现象在现实世界生态系统的复杂情境中仍基本未得到验证。本研究针对潮汐盐沼生态系统沿自然胁迫梯度出现的临界慢化现象，提供了观测与实验双重佐证。欧洲盐沼发育的航空影像时间序列表明，随着淹水胁迫加剧，恢复时长呈现持续延长的趋势。我们通过在欧洲与北美潮汐盐沼开展的移植实验，对这一发现进行了验证。尤为关键的是，本研究结果凸显：相较于空间方差、自相关等间接统计特征，直接通过观测或实验测定的恢复速率指标更具应用价值。本研究结果证实，临界慢化现象可作为探究自然生态系统恢复力的有力工具。