SEMF | Complex Systems against the Anthropogenic Climate Change | Blai Vidiella | Summer School @SEMF | Uploaded July 2022 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
Talk kindly contributed by Blai Vidiella Rocamora in SEMF's 2022 Summer School
semf.org.es/spatiality
COURSE ABSTRACT
Our planet is currently changing rapidly. The poles are melting, oceans biodiversity is vanishing due to plastic pollution, and deserts are advancing at an unstoppable rhythm. Since the origin of life, Earth has evolved due to the interactions between geology, climate, and the biosphere itself. In the past, the emergence of photosynthetic organisms (i.e. cyanobacteria) changed the composition and behavior of the entire planet. Thus, enabling biodiversity to flourish and cover the whole planet. However, since the dawn of humankind, we have altered the balance with our societies pushing the planet towards a new era largely altered by humans. Such changes could be promoting unavoidable and irreversible alterations, the so-called tipping points. These critical points where the systems change dramatically have been observed in many different systems, such as the infection spreading, clouds formation, or population dynamics. We are not only talking about an alternative from existence to extinction, but also from static behaviors to oscillations or even chaos. All this could seem to be very complicated problems to study or tackle, but thanks to complex systems science we have a chance.
Complex systems have studied those complicated systems and shown that usually we can imitate those behaviors by means of small and more comprehensive systems (the minimal models). This does not mean that we can study the system from its smallest parts, but the opposite. Studying an isolated individual (such as an ant) makes it impossible to predict the global dynamics (such as the nest formation). We need to model the essential interactions between the agents to observe emergent phenomena at the scale of the system, where network science plays a crucial role. Another important outcome is the observation that many of the interesting features exhibited are universal. That is, they do not depend on the particularities of the system but arise from the fundamental mechanisms.
In this talk, we will discuss some aspects of the current planetary state, how we have arrived at this point and how scientists are addressing this important subject using Complexity Systems science. The importance of these critical or tipping points and their ghosts (dynamical phenomena that warns us that current ecosystems may be not as healthy as they seem) will also be discussed. Last, but not least, we will talk about how modeling and studying these simple processes could give us a chance to revert or help to improve the current degradation tendency. Can we terraform Earth ecosystems from our knowledge about synthetic organisms?
BLAI VIDIELLA ROCAMORA
PhD in complex systems, researcher in Centre de Recerca Matemàtica
Personal website: http://www.vidiella.science/
Profile in CRM: https://www.crm.cat/person/115/vidiella-rocamora-blai/
ResearchGate: researchgate.net/profile/Blai-Vidiella-Rocamora
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UChU9DgUpQGp8rBI_SCKV4mg
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/blai-vidiella-rocamora-25500572
SEMF NETWORKS
Website: semf.org.es
Twitter: twitter.com/semf_nexus
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/semf-nexus
Instagram: instagram.com/semf.nexus
Facebook: facebook.com/semf.nexus
Talk kindly contributed by Blai Vidiella Rocamora in SEMF's 2022 Summer School
semf.org.es/spatiality
COURSE ABSTRACT
Our planet is currently changing rapidly. The poles are melting, oceans biodiversity is vanishing due to plastic pollution, and deserts are advancing at an unstoppable rhythm. Since the origin of life, Earth has evolved due to the interactions between geology, climate, and the biosphere itself. In the past, the emergence of photosynthetic organisms (i.e. cyanobacteria) changed the composition and behavior of the entire planet. Thus, enabling biodiversity to flourish and cover the whole planet. However, since the dawn of humankind, we have altered the balance with our societies pushing the planet towards a new era largely altered by humans. Such changes could be promoting unavoidable and irreversible alterations, the so-called tipping points. These critical points where the systems change dramatically have been observed in many different systems, such as the infection spreading, clouds formation, or population dynamics. We are not only talking about an alternative from existence to extinction, but also from static behaviors to oscillations or even chaos. All this could seem to be very complicated problems to study or tackle, but thanks to complex systems science we have a chance.
Complex systems have studied those complicated systems and shown that usually we can imitate those behaviors by means of small and more comprehensive systems (the minimal models). This does not mean that we can study the system from its smallest parts, but the opposite. Studying an isolated individual (such as an ant) makes it impossible to predict the global dynamics (such as the nest formation). We need to model the essential interactions between the agents to observe emergent phenomena at the scale of the system, where network science plays a crucial role. Another important outcome is the observation that many of the interesting features exhibited are universal. That is, they do not depend on the particularities of the system but arise from the fundamental mechanisms.
In this talk, we will discuss some aspects of the current planetary state, how we have arrived at this point and how scientists are addressing this important subject using Complexity Systems science. The importance of these critical or tipping points and their ghosts (dynamical phenomena that warns us that current ecosystems may be not as healthy as they seem) will also be discussed. Last, but not least, we will talk about how modeling and studying these simple processes could give us a chance to revert or help to improve the current degradation tendency. Can we terraform Earth ecosystems from our knowledge about synthetic organisms?
BLAI VIDIELLA ROCAMORA
PhD in complex systems, researcher in Centre de Recerca Matemàtica
Personal website: http://www.vidiella.science/
Profile in CRM: https://www.crm.cat/person/115/vidiella-rocamora-blai/
ResearchGate: researchgate.net/profile/Blai-Vidiella-Rocamora
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UChU9DgUpQGp8rBI_SCKV4mg
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/blai-vidiella-rocamora-25500572
SEMF NETWORKS
Website: semf.org.es
Twitter: twitter.com/semf_nexus
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/semf-nexus
Instagram: instagram.com/semf.nexus
Facebook: facebook.com/semf.nexus
