Honeybees have been dying in record numbers, threatening the continued production of nutritious foods such as apples, nuts, blueberries, broccoli, and onions. Without bees to pollinate these crops, the environmental ecosystem—and our health—stands in the balance. Have we reached the tipping point, where the plant-pollinator system is due to collapse?
There was no way to calculate that—until now.
Using statistical physics, Northeastern network scientist Albert-László Barabási and his colleagues Jianxi Gao and Baruch Barzel have developed a tool to identify that tipping point—for everything from ecological systems such as bees and plants to technological systems such as power grids. It opens the door to planning and implementing preventive measures before it’s too late, as well as preparing for recovery after a disaster.
The tool, described in a new paper published on Wednesday in the prestigious journal Nature, fills a longstanding gap in scientists’ understanding of what determines “resilience”—that is, a system’s ability to adjust to disturbances, both internal and external, in order to remain functional.
“The failure of a system can lead to serious consequences, whether to the environment, economy, human health, or technology,” said Barabási, Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics. “But there was no theory that considered the complexity of the networks underlying those systems—that is, their many parameters and components. That made it very difficult, if not impossible, to predict the systems’ resilience in the face of disturbances to those parameters and components.”
“Our tool, for the first time, enables those predictions,” said Barabási, who is also a leader in Northeastern’s Network Science Institute.
