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Resilience reconciled

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Resilience scholarship continues to inspire opaque discourse and competing frameworks often inconsistent with the complexity inherent in social–ecological systems. We contend that competing conceptualizations of resilience are reconcilable, and that the core theory is useful for navigating sustainability challenges.

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Fig. 1: Competing models representing the resilience response of systems over time and to disturbances.
Fig. 2: Three-dimensional model of stability landscapes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Ahmed for graphics support. This work was supported by the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research Development Program W912HQ-15-C-0018 and by the National Science Foundation under Grant no. OIA-1738857. The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and findings of the US Environmental Protection Agency.

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Correspondence to Ahjond Garmestani.

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Allen, C.R., Angeler, D.G., Chaffin, B.C. et al. Resilience reconciled. Nat Sustain 2, 898–900 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0401-4

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