Operationalizing the concepts of resilience and resistance for managing ecosystems and species at risk

Abstract

Ecological resilience is essential for maintaining ecosystem services in an era of rapid global change, but successful attempts to operationalize it for managing ecosystems at risk have been limited. Clear formulation and application of ecological resilience concepts can guide ecosystem management so that it enhances the capacity of ecosystems to resist and recover from disturbances and provides adaptive space for periods of ecological reorganization. As originally defined, ecological resilience measures the amount of perturbation required to change an ecosystem from one set of processes and structures to a different set of processes and structures, or the amount of disturbance that a system can withstand before it shifts into a new regime or alternative stable state (Holling, 1973). In applied ecology, ecological resilience is increasingly used to evaluate the capacity of ecosystems to absorb, persist, and adapt to inevitable and often unpredictable change, and to use that information to determine the most effective management strategies.

Titles contained within Operationalizing the concepts of resilience and resistance for managing ecosystems and species at risk

• Editorial: Operationalizing the concepts of resilience and resistance for managing ecosystems and species at risk
• Operationalizing resilience and resistance concepts to address invasive grass-fire cycles
• Operationalizing ecological resilience concepts for managing species and ecosystems at risk
• Climate-driven shifts in soil temperature and moisture regimes suggest opportunities to enhance assessments of dryland resilience and resistance
• Metrics and models for quantifying ecological resilience at landscape scales

Citation

Chambers, Jeanne C.; Allen, Craig R.; Cushman, Samuel A., eds. 2020. Operationalizing the concepts of resilience and resistance for managing ecosystems and species at risk. Lausanne, Switzerland: Frontiers Media SA. 223 p.