One possible angle may be continuous soil electrochemical time-series alongside the activity and persistence measures. If the breakpoint varies with moisture, temperature, or substrate conditions, I wonder whether changes in the temporal organization of the soil’s electrochemical state could provide an additional time-course signal for identifying when that transition occurs.
I was wondering if you've looked at Dai, Korolev & Gore (2015, PNAS 112:10056). They define stability as return rate after small perturbation and resilience as the distance between stable and unstable fixed points — the largest loss a system can absorb and still recover.
Thanks; yes, there are quite a number of stability definitions in ecology. This is not the most common one. The most common one uses stability as the overall property, consisting of two components, resistance and resilience. But there are many others. As long as it's clear what is meant all is fine. There was a recent paper in Nature, where it says in the Methods section that nobody in the author list could agree on one common definition.
As is explained in our paper, persistence is not the same as these concepts.
I wonder whether the threshold might be better defined by function rather than activity itself, not when activity becomes too high, but when the soil can no longer maintain a specific function under that activity.
Thanks; yes, the concern is certainly for a specific function of soil related to persistence (like soil aggregate stability) and the indicator to watch would be some measured process rate or activity, like enzymatic rates or production of EPS. So, enzymatic activity would be fine up to a point (the threshold) beyond which it becomes negative for the function related to persistence (like soil aggregate stability).
One possible angle may be continuous soil electrochemical time-series alongside the activity and persistence measures. If the breakpoint varies with moisture, temperature, or substrate conditions, I wonder whether changes in the temporal organization of the soil’s electrochemical state could provide an additional time-course signal for identifying when that transition occurs.
I was wondering if you've looked at Dai, Korolev & Gore (2015, PNAS 112:10056). They define stability as return rate after small perturbation and resilience as the distance between stable and unstable fixed points — the largest loss a system can absorb and still recover.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4538670/
Thanks; yes, there are quite a number of stability definitions in ecology. This is not the most common one. The most common one uses stability as the overall property, consisting of two components, resistance and resilience. But there are many others. As long as it's clear what is meant all is fine. There was a recent paper in Nature, where it says in the Methods section that nobody in the author list could agree on one common definition.
As is explained in our paper, persistence is not the same as these concepts.
I wonder whether the threshold might be better defined by function rather than activity itself, not when activity becomes too high, but when the soil can no longer maintain a specific function under that activity.
Thanks; yes, the concern is certainly for a specific function of soil related to persistence (like soil aggregate stability) and the indicator to watch would be some measured process rate or activity, like enzymatic rates or production of EPS. So, enzymatic activity would be fine up to a point (the threshold) beyond which it becomes negative for the function related to persistence (like soil aggregate stability).