Can We Detect Tipping Points in the Biosphere?

Nov 6, 2025

Helmut Hillebrand, a professor and director focused on marine biodiversity, dives into the intricate world of ecological tipping points. He reveals the challenges in predicting these thresholds, highlighting how abrupt changes can destabilize ecosystems. Hillebrand critiques the concept of 'safe operating spaces,' warning they might overlook gradual losses that accumulate below seemingly safe limits. He emphasizes that biodiversity operates in complex ways, urging a shift in how we understand and value the resilience of our planet.

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INSIGHT

Predictability Is Essential For Tipping Points

Tipping points only help if we can predict or detect them before they occur.
Helmut Hillebrand warns that retrospective detection makes the concept useless for safe operating spaces.

ANECDOTE

Lakes Flipping From Plants To Algae

Shallow lakes can flip from macrophyte to phytoplankton dominance with rising nutrients.
Such regime shifts persist via positive feedbacks and are classic tipping examples.

INSIGHT

Empirical Thresholds Are Rarely Detectable

A meta-meta-analysis of 36 meta-analyses found almost no empirical thresholds.
Even small noise makes statistical detection of thresholds fail in simulations.

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Guest: Helmut Hillebrand

Are there tipping points in ecosystems — and if so, can we detect them before the system tips? In this episode of Inside Biodiversity, host Volker Hahn talks with Helmut Hillebrand, professor at the University of Oldenburg and the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, about the science and the politics behind thresholds, regime shifts, and planetary boundaries.

Hillebrand explains why predicting tipping points in ecosystems is so difficult, what his global meta-analysis revealed about abrupt versus gradual change, and why applying “safe operating spaces” to biodiversity might do more harm than good. Together, Hillebrand and Hahn explore what this means for environmental policy — and for how we think about the resilience and value of life on Earth.

“Thinking about biodiversity in binary ways—about below and above the threshold—is the wrong way of thinking about how biodiversity works and how we rely on it”, says Hillebrand.