In this era of global environmental change, stability has become a focal topic of study across diverse ecosystems. Several ecosystems are shown to have multiple stable states at similar environmental conditions; for example, in terrestrial systems, forests and savanna can both occur under similar rainfall conditions. Although both regimes can sustain for a range of climatic conditions, beyond a threshold, even small changes in the amount of rainfall cause the system to abruptly shift to the alternative regime. These shifts, called catastrophic regime shifts or critical transitions, are not easily reversible and can have devastating effects on ecosystems and the services they provide. Simple theoretical models have been used to understand the dynamics of such systems and to develop metrics to anticipate these transitions. However, some recent empirical studies show that these models have several caveats which render them unsuitable for application to real-world systems. Therefore, there is a need for empirically motivated models to better our understanding of abrupt transitions and their impacts on human societies. This session integrates theoretical and empirical studies on multistability, abrupt shifts and early warning indicators of the shifts, across various terrestrial socio-ecological systems. It will facilitate synthesis of underlying mechanistic processes with the broad scale emergent patterns associated with regime shifts. Specifically, it focuses on three interconnected topics within this vast field: 1) Investigation of multi-stability across environmental gradients, 2) dynamics of regime shifts and their impacts, and 3) early warning indicators of impending regime shifts. Focusing on these aspects and evaluating them together will help us develop better tools to understand the stability of ecosystems which can lead to improved conservation and management strategies.