Bounded ecological pilot (structural metrics vs lagging indicators)
- Parent: README.md
- Formal index: ../FORMAL_LEDGER.md
This document specifies a science-first pilot aligned with THREE_ARENAS_SYNTHESIS.md honesty: no autonomous planetary actuation without independent review and containment stronger than software quarantine.
Scope (single domain)
Pick one of: a named watershed, a managed fishery food-web study, or a pollination network with longitudinal data and explicit taxonomic resolution.
Data contract
- Versioned graph definitions: nodes, edges, time-varying weights; schema version in every export. Structural JSON schema: schemas/ecology-graph-snapshot.schema.json; reference validator:
src/ecology-graph-snapshot.ts; fixture: fixtures/ecology-graph-snapshot.valid.json. - Uncertainty fields where measurements are noisy (confidence intervals, not point fiction).
- Provenance: sensor vs survey vs model-derived edges—typed separately.
Pre-registered hypotheses
Before analysis lock:
- Structural summary (β₁ slack, min-cut margin, λ₂ surrogate on effective graph when definable) leads a named lagging indicator (biomass, species count, yield) by T months on held-out windows—or fails on falsification criteria.
- Null: structural metrics add no predictive skill over baseline time-series.
Deliverables
- Internal dashboard (optional) + publication or preprint with preregistration ID.
- Separate from product marketing: ecological claims do not ship as Gnosis runtime guarantees.
Non-goals
- Global β₁ on ill-defined “Earth graph.”
- Autonomous drone / actuator loops without containment review (see AUTONOMOUS_MUTATION_ZERO_TRUST.md).