Madhur Anand's research while affiliated with University of Waterloo and other places
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Publications (209)
Many natural and man-made systems are prone to critical transitions -- abrupt and potentially devastating changes in dynamics. Deep learning classifiers can provide an early warning signal (EWS) for critical transitions by learning generic features of bifurcations (dynamical instabilities) from large simulated training data sets. So far, classifier...
As environmental degradation progresses, economies and societies adapt to the loss of ecosystem services and public attention to degradation subsides. In systems experiencing such societal acclimation to degradation, net incentives for stakeholder mitigation peak during early degradation phases and subside over time. Using harmful algae blooms in w...
Humans and the environment form a single complex system where humans not only influence ecosystems but also react to them. Despite this, there are far fewer coupled human–environment system (CHES) mathematical models than models of uncoupled ecosystems. We argue that these coupled models are essential to understand the impacts of social interventio...
1. Intraspecific trait variability (ITV) provides the material for species’ adaptation to environmental changes. To advance our understanding of how ITV can contribute to species’ adaptation to a wide range of environmental conditions, we studied five widespread understorey forest species exposed to both continental‐scale climate gradients, and loc...
Safeguarding Earth’s tree diversity is a conservation priority due to the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services such as carbon sequestration. Here, we improve the foundation for effective conservation of global tree diversity by analyzing a recently developed database of tree species covering 46,752 species. We q...
In Brazil, the country with the highest plant species richness in the world, biodiverse savannas and grasslands – i.e., grassy ecosystems, which occupy 27% of the country – have historically been neglected in conservation and scientific treatments. Reasons for this neglect include misconceptions about the characteristics and dynamics of these ecosy...
The potential for complex systems to exhibit tipping points in which an equilibrium state undergoes a sudden and potentially irreversible shift is well established, but prediction of these events using standard forecast modeling techniques is quite difficult. This has led to the development of an alternative suite of methods that seek to identify s...
Overfishing has the potential to severely disrupt coral reef ecosystems worldwide, while harvesting at more sustainable levels instead can boost fish yield without damaging reefs. The dispersal abilities of reef species mean that coral reefs form highly connected environments, and the viability of reef fish populations depends on spatially explicit...
Simulation models from the early COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgency of applying non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), but had limited empirical data. Here we use data from 2020-2021 to retrospectively model the impact of NPIs in Ontario, Canada. Our model represents age groups and census divisions in Ontario, and is parameterised with epi...
Stochasticity is often associated with negative consequences for population dynamics since a population may die out due to random chance during periods when population size is very low (stochastic fade-out). Here we develop a coupled social-ecological model based on stochastic differential equations that includes natural expansion and harvesting of...
Simulations of the land surface carbon cycle typically compress functional diversity into a small set of plant functional types (PFT), with parameters defined by the average value of measurements of functional traits. In most earth system models, all wild plant life is represented by between five and 14 PFTs and a typical grid cell (≈100 × 100 km)...
Despite the relevance of ecosystem services (ES) to society and modern ecological research, current methods of measurement and mapping remain inconsistent and often lack primary data in estimating and modeling ES. A key player in our understanding of ES and their measurements are plant functional traits—chemical and physical aspects of plants—which...
In agroecological mosaic landscapes, the potential of the landscape to provide a broad range of ecosystem services (ES) is vital to human well-being. Landscape structure and composition plays an important role in ecosystem functioning and the production of ES. In this study, we aim to evaluate the potential of natural land use types within an agroe...
Plant functional traits can predict community assembly and ecosystem functioning and are thus widely used in global models of vegetation dynamics and land–climate feedbacks. Still, we lack a global understanding of how land and climate affect plant traits. A previous global analysis of six traits observed two main axes of variation: (1) size variat...
Vaccines and climate change have much in common. In both cases, a scientific consensus contrasts with a divided public opinion. They also exemplify coupled human–environment systems involving common pool resources. Here we used machine learning algorithms to analyze the sentiment of 87 million tweets on climate change and vaccines in order to chara...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238979.].
Bark beetle outbreaks and forest fires have imposed severe ecological damage and caused billions of dollars in lost resources in recent decades. The impact of such combined disturbances is projected to become more severe, especially as climate change takes its toll on forest ecosystems in the coming years. Here, we investigate the impact of multipl...
Dietary patterns have long been a driver of global land use. Increasingly, they also respond to it, in part because of social processes that support adoption of eco-conscious diets. Here we develop a coupled social-and-land use mathematical model parameterised for 153 countries. We project global land use for future population, income, and agricult...
Climate dynamics are inextricably linked to processes in social systems that are highly unequal. This suggests a need for coupled social-climate models that capture pervasive real-world asymmetries in the population distribution of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change and climate (in)action. Here, we use evolutionary game theory to deve...
Significance
Early warning signals (EWS) of tipping points are vital to anticipate system collapse or other sudden shifts. However, existing generic early warning indicators designed to work across all systems do not provide information on the state that lies beyond the tipping point. Our results show how deep learning algorithms (artificial intell...
Vaccinating individuals with more exposure to others can be disproportionately effective, in theory, but identifying these individuals is difficult and has long prevented implementation of such strategies. Here, we propose how the technology underlying digital contact tracing could be harnessed to boost vaccine coverage among these individuals. In...
Overfishing has the potential to severely disrupt coral reef ecosystems worldwide, while harvesting at more sustainable levels instead can boost fish yield without damaging reefs. The dispersal abilities of reef species mean that coral reefs form highly connected environments, and the viability of reef fish populations depends on spatially explicit...
Given trade's importance to maintaining food security, it is crucial to understand the relationship between human population growth, land use, food supply, and trade. We develop a metapopulation model coupling human population dynamics to agricultural land use and food production in "patches" (regions and countries) connected via trade networks. Pa...
Questions
Cold temperatures and freezing may hinder the process of forest expansion in moist climate regions, as predicted by the frost hypothesis. We examined the role of frost on the survival and regrowth of tree saplings under field conditions of open grasslands.
Location
Cambará do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul
Methods
We established a field experim...
Biogeochemistry has an important role to play in many environmental issues of current concern related to global change and air, water, and soil quality. However, reliable predictions and tangible implementation of solutions, offered by biogeochemistry, will need further integration of disciplines. Here, we refocus on how further developing and stre...
Recent attempts at cooperating on climate change mitigation highlight the limited efficacy of large-scale negotiations, when commitment to mitigation is costly and initially rare. Deepening existing voluntary mitigation pledges could require more stringent, legally-binding agreements that currently remain untenable at the global scale. Building-blo...
Given the large contribution of forests to terrestrial carbon storage, there is a need to resolve the environmental and physiological drivers of tree-level response to rising atmospheric CO 2 . This study examines how site-level soil moisture influences growth and intrinsic water-use efficiency in sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.). We construct t...
The critical community size (CCS) is the minimum closed population size in which a pathogen can persist indefinitely. Below this threshold, stochastic extinction eventually causes pathogen extinction. Here we use a simulation model to explore behaviour-mediated persistence: a novel mechanism by which the population response to the pathogen determin...
Many natural systems exhibit regime shifts where slowly changing environmental conditions suddenly shift the system to a new and sometimes very different state. As the tipping point is approached, the dynamics of complex and varied systems all simplify down to a small number of possible 'normal forms' that determine how the new regime will look. In...
Simulation models from the early COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgency of applying non-pharmacetical interventions (NPIs), but had limited empirical data to use. Here we use data from 2020-2021 to retrospectively model the impact of NPIs. Our model represents age groups and census division in Ontario, Canada, and is parameterised with epidemiol...
There is a pressing need for evidence-based scrutiny of plans to re-open childcare centres during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we developed an agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission within a childcare centre and households. Scenarios varied the student-to-educator ratio (15:2, 8:2, 7:3), family clustering (siblings together versus random assig...
Background
During the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities must decide which groups to prioritise for vaccination in a shifting social–epidemiological landscape in which the success of large-scale non-pharmaceutical interventions requires broad social acceptance. We aimed to compare projected COVID-19 mortality under four different strategies for the pri...
Life history strategies are fundamental to the ecology and evolution of organisms and are important for understanding extinction risk and responses to global change. Using global datasets and a multiple response modelling framework we show that trait‐climate interactions are associated with life history strategies for a diverse range of plant speci...
Shared resource extraction among profit-seeking individuals involves a tension between individual benefit and the collective well-being represented by the persistence of the resource. Many game theoretic models explore this scenario, but these models tend to assume either best response dynamics (where individuals instantly switch to better paying s...
The results of COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials suggest that an end to the pandemic is within reach. However, public health authorities worldwide are faced with the difficult task of prioritizing their allocation. Theory indicates that prioritizing vaccination of individuals with more contacts can be disproportionately effective. However, implement...
After vaccinating health care workers and vulnerable groups against COVID-19, authorities will need to decide how to vaccinate everyone else. Prioritising individuals with more contacts can be disproportionately effective, in theory, but identifying these individuals is difficult. Here we show that the technology underlying Bluetooth exposure notif...
Vaccines and climate change have much in common. In both cases, a scientific consensus contrasts with a divided public opinion. They also exemplify coupled human-environment systems involving common pool resources. Here we used machine learning algorithms to analyze the sentiment of 87 million tweets on climate change and vaccines in order to chara...
Both historical and contemporary environmental conditions determine present biodiversity patterns, but their relative importance is not well understood. One way to disentangle their relative effects is to assess how different dimensions of beta-diversity relate to past climatic changes, i.e., taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional compositional dis...
Biogeochemistry has an important role to play in many environmental issues of current concern related to global change and air, water, and soil quality. However, reliable predictions and tangible take-up of solutions offered by biogeochemistry will need further integration of disciplines. Here, we emphasize how further developing ties between biolo...
In May 2020, many jurisdictions around the world began lifting physical distancing
restrictions against the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2). This gave rise to concerns about a possible second wave of coronavirus
disease 2019 (COVID-19). These restrictions were imposed in response to the presence
of COVID-19 in...
In May 2020, many jurisdictions around the world began lifting physical distancing restrictions against the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), giving rise to concerns about a possible second wave of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). These restrictions were imposed as a collective population response to the pr...
Background
During the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities must decide which groups to prioritise for vaccination. These decision will occur in a constantly shifting social-epidemiological landscape where the success of large-scale non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like physical distancing requires broad population acceptance.
Methods
We developed...
Dietary patterns have long been a driver of global land use. Increasingly, they also respond to it, in part because of social forces that support adoption of sustainable diets. Here we develop a coupled social-land use dynamics model parameterised for 164 countries. We project global land use under 20 scenarios for future population, income, and ag...
Climate dynamics are inextricably linked to processes in social systems that are highly unequal. This suggests a need for coupled social-climate models that capture pervasive real-world asymmetries in the population distribution of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change and climate (in)action. Here we develop a simple social-climate model...
Invasive pests, such as emerald ash borer or Asian longhorn beetle, have been responsible for unprecedented ecological and economic damage in eastern North America. These and other wood-boring invasive insects can spread to new areas through human transport of untreated firewood. Behaviour, such as transport of firewood, is affected not only by imm...
In mosaic ecosystems, multiple land types coexist as alternative stable states exhibiting distinct spatial patterns. Forest-grassland mosaics are ecologically valuable, due to their high species richness. However, anthropogenic disturbances threaten these ecosystems. Designating protected areas is one approach to preserving natural mosaics. Such wo...
Significance
During the COVID-19 pandemic, decision makers are grappling with how to reopen (and possibly reclose) their jurisdictions as the number of cases ebbs and flows. Establishing a criterion for each county/municipality to open and close based on their case count has appeal, given the wide disparity in COVID-19 rates in urban versus rural s...
Theory and observation tell us that many complex systems exhibit tipping points—thresholds involving an abrupt and irreversible transition to a contrasting dynamical regime. Such events are commonly referred to as critical transitions. Current research seeks to develop early warning signals (EWS) of critical transitions that could help prevent unde...
There is a pressing need for evidence-based scrutiny of plans to re-open childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we developed an agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission within a childcare center and households. Scenarios varied the student-to-educator ratio (15:2, 8:2, 7:3), and family clustering (siblings together vs. random assignment)....
Recent attempts at cooperating on climate change mitigation highlight the limited efficacy of large-scale agreements, when commitment to mitigation is costly and initially rare. Bottom-up approaches using region-specific mitigation agreements promise greater success, at the cost of slowing global adoption. Here, we show that a well-timed switch fro...
Significance
Collective risks trigger social dilemmas that require balancing selfish interests and common good. One important example is mitigating climate change, wherein without sufficient investments, worldwide negative consequences become increasingly likely. To study the social aspects of this problem, we organized a game experiment that revea...
Trees are of vital importance for ecosystem functioning and services at local to global scales, yet we still lack a detailed overview of the global patterns of tree diversity and the underlying drivers, particularly the imprint of paleoclimate. Here, we present the high-resolution (110 km) worldwide mapping of tree species richness, functional and...
In the late stages of an epidemic, infections are often sporadic and geographically distributed. Spatially structured stochastic models can capture these important features of disease dynamics, thereby allowing a broader exploration of interventions. Here we develop a stochastic model of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)...
The resurgence of infectious diseases due to vaccine refusal has highlighted the role of interactions between disease dynamics and the spread of vaccine opinion on social networks. Shifts between disease elimination and outbreak regimes often occur through tipping points. It is known that tipping points can be predicted by early warning signals (EW...
Although trees are key to ecosystem functioning, many forests and tree species across the globe face strong threats. Preserving areas of high biodiversity is a core priority for conservation; however, different dimensions of biodiversity and varied conservation targets make it difficult to respond effectively to this challenge. Here, we (i) identif...
Aim
Predictions of plant traits over space and time are increasingly used to improve our understanding of plant community responses to global environmental change. A necessary step forward is to assess the reliability of global trait predictions. In this study, we predict community mean plant traits at the global scale and present a systematic eval...
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...
With increasing awareness of the consequences of climate change for global ecosystems, the focus and application of tree ring research have shifted to reconstruction of long-term climate-related trends in tree growth. Contemporary methods for estimating and removing biological growth trends from tree ring series (standardization) are ill-adapted to...
Nitrogen runoff in certain southeastern Australian grasslands promotes the invasion of exotic grassland species at the expense of native species. Mitigation programs can reduce runoff and thus support native species, but their success may require the awareness and support of local populations. This situation represents a coupled socio-ecological sy...
It is widely recognized that coupled socio-ecological dynamics can be qualitatively different from the dynamics of social or ecological systems in isolation from one another. The influence of the type of ecological dynamics on the dynamics of the larger socio-ecological system is less well studied, however. Here, we carry out such a comparison usin...
Plant trait databases often contain traits that are correlated, but for whom direct (undirected statistical dependency) and indirect (mediated by other traits) connections may be confounded. The confounding of correlation and connection hinders our understanding of plant strategies, and how these vary among growth forms and climate zones. We identi...
Achieving sustainability is challenging as an environmental and socio‐economic objective, and as a complex concept whose multiple components and their interactions need to be considered. We develop a statistical model to investigate relationships among and between the planetary boundaries and social foundations of the sustainability ‘doughnut’ mode...
1.Considering intraspecific trait variability (ITV) in ecological studies has improved our understanding of species persistence and coexistence. These advances are based on the growing number of leaf ITV studies over local gradients, but logistical constraints have prevented a solid examination of ITV in root traits or at scales reflecting species'...
With increasing awareness of the consequences of climate change for global ecosystems, the focus and application of tree-ring research has shifted to reconstruction of long-term climate-related trends in tree growth. Contemporary methods for removing the biological growth-trend from tree-ring series (standardization) are ill-adapted to shade-tolera...
Geophysical models of climate change are becoming increasingly sophisticated, yet less effort is devoted to modelling the human systems causing climate change and how the two systems are coupled. Here, we develop a simple socio-climate model by coupling an Earth system model to a social dynamics model. We treat social processes endogenously-emergin...
An effective strategy to resolve conservation conflicts on lands outside of nature reserves is to consider the spatial arrangement of agricultural and native vegetation parcels such that the ecological value of the landscape is improved without reducing the amount of land used for agricultural production. Global optimization methods have been used...
A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.
Over-exploitation of natural resources can have profound effects on both ecosystems and their resident human populations. Simple theoretical models of the dynamics of a population of human harvesters and the abundance of a natural resource being harvested have been studied previously, but relatively few models consider the effect of metapopulation...
The conversion of natural lands to agricultural and urban areas is the leading cause of biodiversity loss worldwide, and an understanding of functional trait assembly pattern can help to mitigate the ecological implications of this loss. We use plant functional traits—characteristics of the plant that determine how they react to and interact with t...
A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.
