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FORUM: Effective management of ecological resilience – are we there yet?

October 1, 2015
  1. Ecological resilience is developing into a credible paradigm for policy development and environmental management for preserving natural capital in a rapidly changing world. However, resilience emerges from complex interactions, limiting the translation of theory into practice.
  2. Main limitations include the following: (i) difficulty in quantification and detection of changes in ecological resilience, (ii) a lack of empirical evidence to support preventative or proactive management and (iii) difficulties in managing processes operating across socio-ecological systems that vary in space and time.
  3. We highlight recent research with the potential to address these limitations including new and/or improved indicators of resilience and tools to assess scale as a driver of resilience.
  4. Synthesis and applications. Effective resilience-based management must be adaptive in nature. To support this, we propose an operational model using resilience-based iterative management actions operating across scales.
Publication Year 2015
Title FORUM: Effective management of ecological resilience – are we there yet?
DOI 10.1111/1365-2664.12497
Authors Bryan M. Spears, Stephen C. Ives, David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Sebastian Birk, Laurence Carvalho, Stephen Cavers, Francis Daunt, R. Daniel Morton, Michael J. O. Pocock, Glenn Rhodes, Stephen J. Thackeray
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Journal of Applied Ecology
Index ID 70191658
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Coop Res Unit Seattle