Fig. 2: Empirical relationship between system area and regime shift duration.
From: Regime shifts occur disproportionately faster in larger ecosystems
a The log–log linear relationship between the spatial area and the temporal duration of 42 observed Earth system regime shifts is described by a linear regression model (solid line: R2 = 0.491, p < 0.001, df = 40). This illustrates the positive and sub-linear (slope = 0.221) association between system size and shift duration. b The relationship in A is compared with the 1:1 reference line (dashed line, slope = 1). The untransformed unit of the x-axis is kilometres-squared, while the y-axis is years. The shading represents the 95% confidence interval around the regression model; see Supplementary Table 1 for individual case-study details and see Supplementary Fig. 4 for the regression models grouped by system type.
