  The curvature field is measured from tracer particle trajectories in a
two-dimensional fluid flow that exhibits spatiotemporal chaos, and is used to
extract the hyperbolic and elliptic points of the flow. These special points
are pinned to the forcing when the driving is weak, but wander over the domain
and interact in pairs at stronger driving, changing the local topology of the
flow. Their behavior reveals a two-stage transition to spatiotemporal chaos: a
gradual loss of spatial and temporal order followed by an abrupt onset of
topological changes.
