Abstract
Deliberate progress towards the goal of long-term sustainability depends on understanding the dynamics of linked social and ecological systems. The concept of social-ecological resilience holds promise for interdisciplinary syntheses. Resilience is a multifaceted concept that as yet has not been directly operationalized, particularly in systems for which our ignorance is such that detailed, parameter-rich simulation models are difficult to develop. We present an exploratory framework as a step towards the operationalization of resilience for empirical studies. We equate resilience with the ability of a system to maintain its identity, where system identity is defined as a property of key components and relationships (networks) and their continuity through space and time. Innovation and memory are also fundamental to understanding identity and resilience. By parsing our systems into the elements that we subjectively consider essential to identity, we obtain a small set of specific focal variables that reflect changes in identity. By assessing the potential for changes in identity under specified drivers and perturbations, in combination with a scenario-based approach to considering alternative futures, we obtain a surrogate measure of the current resilience of our study system as the likelihood of a change in system identity under clearly specified conditions, assumptions, drivers and perturbations. Although the details of individual case studies differ, the concept of identity provides a level of generality that can be used to compare measure of resilience across cases. Our approach will also yield insights into the mechanisms of change and the potential consequences of different policy and management decisions, providing a level of decision support for each case study area.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the other members of the UF roadies group for their contributions over the past 2 years to the many discussions that have led to the development of this framework. Thanks are also due to Tom Clarke (UCF), Foster Brown, and our partners in Brazil/MAP and Chile. GC is grateful to John Collier of the University of Natal for his collaboration in helping to refine ideas about identity in complex systems. Thoughtful comments were provided on an earlier draft of this manuscript by Frances Westley, Steve Carpenter, and two anonymous referees.
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Cumming, G.S., Barnes, G., Perz, S. et al. An Exploratory Framework for the Empirical Measurement of Resilience. Ecosystems 8, 975–987 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-005-0129-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-005-0129-z