Ecosystem Stability in a Changing World: Mechanisms, Thresholds, and Management

Ecosystems worldwide are under mounting pressure from climate warming, extreme events, nutrient deposition, land-use change, and habitat fragmentation. As these drivers intensify, a central question in ecology becomes ever more urgent: what keeps ecosystems stable, and when do they cross the thresholds that trigger abrupt, often irreversible, change? Understanding the mechanisms that confer stability, and the tipping points at which it collapses, is essential for anticipating ecological transitions and for managing ecosystems that can withstand and recover from disturbance.

Decades of research have established that biodiversity plays a key role in stabilizing ecosystem functioning, yet the strength and direction of this relationship vary across temporal scales, spatial patterns, and levels of ecological organization. At the same time, advances in long-term monitoring, remote sensing, experimental manipulation, and scenario modeling now allow us to detect early-warning signals of instability, project ecosystem responses under alternative futures, and test management strategies that build resilience. Bridging these mechanistic insights with applied, forward-looking management remains a critical frontier.

The goal of this Research Topic is to bring together fundamental and applied research that advances our understanding of ecosystem stability: from the mechanisms that generate it, to the thresholds that end it, to the strategies that restore and sustain it. We welcome studies spanning terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems, and across scales from local communities to regional landscapes.

We invite Original Research, Reviews, Hypothesis and Theory, Methods, and Perspective articles addressing, but not limited to, four themes:

1. Spatiotemporal dynamics and key mechanisms of the biodiversity-stability relationship. How does biodiversity influence the stability of ecosystem functioning across different temporal scales and spatial patterns, and what mechanisms underpin these effects?
2. Ecosystem stability thresholds and tipping points under environmental change. Under global change drivers such as climate warming, extreme events, and nutrient deposition, when and how do ecosystems lose stability and undergo state transitions? What early-warning indicators can detect these shifts?
3. Resilience enhancement and adaptive management of ecosystem structure-function stability. How can insights into stability mechanisms guide the restoration of degraded ecosystems and inform adaptive ecological paradigms for coping with future environmental change?

By integrating mechanistic understanding with predictive modeling and management application, this Research Topic aims to strengthen the scientific foundation for sustaining ecosystem stability and resilience in a rapidly changing world.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Specialty Grand Challenge
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: ecosystem stability, biodiversity, resilience, tipping points, ecological thresholds, ecosystem services, global change, adaptive management, ecosystem restoration, regime shifts

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.