AUTHOR=Graham Emily B. , Averill Colin , Bond-Lamberty Ben , Knelman Joseph E. , Krause Stefan , Peralta Ariane L. , Shade Ashley , Smith A. Peyton , Cheng Susan J. , Fanin Nicolas , Freund Cathryn , Garcia Patricia E. , Gibbons Sean M. , Van Goethem Marc W. , Guebila Marouen Ben , Kemppinen Julia , Nowicki Robert J. , Pausas Juli G. , Reed Samuel P. , Rocca Jennifer , Sengupta Aditi , Sihi Debjani , Simonin Marie , Słowiński Michał , Spawn Seth A. , Sutherland Ira , Tonkin Jonathan D. , Wisnoski Nathan I. , Zipper Samuel C. , Contributor Consortium , Staal Arie , Arora Bhavna , Oldfield Callie , Dwivedi Dipankar , Larson Erin , Santillan Ezequiel , Aaron Hogan J. , Atkins Jeff , Zheng Jianqiu , Lembrechts Jonas , Patel Kaizad , Copes-Gerbitz Kelsey , Winker Kevin , Mudge Laura , Wong Mark , Nuñez Martin , Luoto Miska , Barnes Rebecca TITLE=Toward a Generalizable Framework of Disturbance Ecology Through Crowdsourced Science JOURNAL=Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution VOLUME=9 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.588940 DOI=10.3389/fevo.2021.588940 ISSN=2296-701X ABSTRACT=

Disturbances fundamentally alter ecosystem functions, yet predicting their impacts remains a key scientific challenge. While the study of disturbances is ubiquitous across many ecological disciplines, there is no agreed-upon, cross-disciplinary foundation for discussing or quantifying the complexity of disturbances, and no consistent terminology or methodologies exist. This inconsistency presents an increasingly urgent challenge due to accelerating global change and the threat of interacting disturbances that can destabilize ecosystem responses. By harvesting the expertise of an interdisciplinary cohort of contributors spanning 42 institutions across 15 countries, we identified an essential limitation in disturbance ecology: the word ‘disturbance’ is used interchangeably to refer to both the events that cause, and the consequences of, ecological change, despite fundamental distinctions between the two meanings. In response, we developed a generalizable framework of ecosystem disturbances, providing a well-defined lexicon for understanding disturbances across perspectives and scales. The framework results from ideas that resonate across multiple scientific disciplines and provides a baseline standard to compare disturbances across fields. This framework can be supplemented by discipline-specific variables to provide maximum benefit to both inter- and intra-disciplinary research. To support future syntheses and meta-analyses of disturbance research, we also encourage researchers to be explicit in how they define disturbance drivers and impacts, and we recommend minimum reporting standards that are applicable regardless of scale. Finally, we discuss the primary factors we considered when developing a baseline framework and propose four future directions to advance our interdisciplinary understanding of disturbances and their social-ecological impacts: integrating across ecological scales, understanding disturbance interactions, establishing baselines and trajectories, and developing process-based models and ecological forecasting initiatives. Our experience through this process motivates us to encourage the wider scientific community to continue to explore new approaches for leveraging Open Science principles in generating creative and multidisciplinary ideas.