Fig. 3

In each graph below, all of the model parameters are fixed besides the food production resilience parameter, b. We set \(b = 100\) for the blue lines and \(b = 0.1\) for the orange lines. Due to the contrast in duration of the starvation periods observed in b and c, we classify the blue line as a chronic famine and the orange line as an acute famine. a We plot the difference in equilibria for each of the parameter sets. Notice larger values of b allow for equilibria with greater excess food and human population values. b Here, we observe that given the same initial shortage of food, the acute case recovers to a stable equilibrium within 3 seasons while the chronic case requires approximately 20 seasons to recover to an equilibrium. c The acute case suffers a loss of only about 0.1 or \(10\%\) of the initial population while the chronic famine endures a steady decline in population with a total of 0.8 or \(80\%\) of the initial population lost