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A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products

Publicly available remote sensing products have boosted science in many ways. The openness of these data sources suggests high reproducibility. However, as we show here, results may be specific to versions of the data products that can become unavailable as new versions are posted. We focus on remot...

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Autores principales: Xu, Chi, Holmgren, Milena, Van Nes, Egbert H., Hirota, Marina, Chapin, F. Stuart, Scheffer, Marten
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4646617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26571014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143014
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author Xu, Chi
Holmgren, Milena
Van Nes, Egbert H.
Hirota, Marina
Chapin, F. Stuart
Scheffer, Marten
author_facet Xu, Chi
Holmgren, Milena
Van Nes, Egbert H.
Hirota, Marina
Chapin, F. Stuart
Scheffer, Marten
author_sort Xu, Chi
collection PubMed
description Publicly available remote sensing products have boosted science in many ways. The openness of these data sources suggests high reproducibility. However, as we show here, results may be specific to versions of the data products that can become unavailable as new versions are posted. We focus on remotely-sensed tree cover. Recent studies have used this public resource to detect multi-modality in tree cover in the tropical and boreal biomes. Such patterns suggest alternative stable states separated by critical tipping points. This has important implications for the potential response of these ecosystems to global climate change. For the boreal region, four distinct ecosystem states (i.e., treeless, sparse and dense woodland, and boreal forest) were previously identified by using the Collection 3 data of MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF). Since then, the MODIS VCF product has been updated to Collection 5; and a Landsat VCF product of global tree cover at a fine spatial resolution of 30 meters has been developed. Here we compare these different remote-sensing products of tree cover to show that identification of alternative stable states in the boreal biome partly depends on the data source used. The updated MODIS data and the newer Landsat data consistently demonstrate three distinct modes around similar tree-cover values. Our analysis suggests that the boreal region has three modes: one sparsely vegetated state (treeless), one distinct ‘savanna-like’ state and one forest state, which could be alternative stable states. Our analysis illustrates that qualitative outcomes of studies may change fundamentally as new versions of remote sensing products are used. Scientific reproducibility thus requires that old versions remain publicly available.
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spelling pubmed-46466172015-11-25 A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products Xu, Chi Holmgren, Milena Van Nes, Egbert H. Hirota, Marina Chapin, F. Stuart Scheffer, Marten PLoS One Research Article Publicly available remote sensing products have boosted science in many ways. The openness of these data sources suggests high reproducibility. However, as we show here, results may be specific to versions of the data products that can become unavailable as new versions are posted. We focus on remotely-sensed tree cover. Recent studies have used this public resource to detect multi-modality in tree cover in the tropical and boreal biomes. Such patterns suggest alternative stable states separated by critical tipping points. This has important implications for the potential response of these ecosystems to global climate change. For the boreal region, four distinct ecosystem states (i.e., treeless, sparse and dense woodland, and boreal forest) were previously identified by using the Collection 3 data of MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF). Since then, the MODIS VCF product has been updated to Collection 5; and a Landsat VCF product of global tree cover at a fine spatial resolution of 30 meters has been developed. Here we compare these different remote-sensing products of tree cover to show that identification of alternative stable states in the boreal biome partly depends on the data source used. The updated MODIS data and the newer Landsat data consistently demonstrate three distinct modes around similar tree-cover values. Our analysis suggests that the boreal region has three modes: one sparsely vegetated state (treeless), one distinct ‘savanna-like’ state and one forest state, which could be alternative stable states. Our analysis illustrates that qualitative outcomes of studies may change fundamentally as new versions of remote sensing products are used. Scientific reproducibility thus requires that old versions remain publicly available. Public Library of Science 2015-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4646617/ /pubmed/26571014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143014 Text en © 2015 Xu et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Xu, Chi
Holmgren, Milena
Van Nes, Egbert H.
Hirota, Marina
Chapin, F. Stuart
Scheffer, Marten
A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products
title A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products
title_full A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products
title_fullStr A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products
title_full_unstemmed A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products
title_short A Changing Number of Alternative States in the Boreal Biome: Reproducibility Risks of Replacing Remote Sensing Products
title_sort changing number of alternative states in the boreal biome: reproducibility risks of replacing remote sensing products
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4646617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26571014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143014
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