Foundations of Ecological Resilience

Foundations of Ecological Resilience
Author: Lance H. Gunderson
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2012-07-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1610911334

Ecological resilience provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how complex systems adapt to and recover from localized disturbances like hurricanes, fires, pest outbreaks, and floods, as well as large-scale perturbations such as climate change. Ecologists have developed resilience theory over the past three decades in an effort to explain surprising and nonlinear dynamics of complex adaptive systems. Resilience theory is especially important to environmental scientists for its role in underpinning adaptive management approaches to ecosystem and resource management. Foundations of Ecological Resilience is a collection of the most important articles on the subject of ecological resilience—those writings that have defined and developed basic concepts in the field and help explain its importance and meaning for scientists and researchers. The book’s three sections cover articles that have shaped or defined the concepts and theories of resilience, including key papers that broke new conceptual ground and contributed novel ideas to the field; examples that demonstrate ecological resilience in a range of ecosystems; and articles that present practical methods for understanding and managing nonlinear ecosystem dynamics. Foundations of Ecological Resilience is an important contribution to our collective understanding of resilience and an invaluable resource for students and scholars in ecology, wildlife ecology, conservation biology, sustainability, environmental science, public policy, and related fields.

Social-Ecological Resilience and Law

Social-Ecological Resilience and Law
Author: Ahjond S. Garmestani
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0231536356

Environmental law envisions ecological systems as existing in an equilibrium state, reinforcing a rigid legal framework unable to absorb rapid environmental changes and innovations in sustainability. For the past four decades, "resilience theory," which embraces uncertainty and nonlinear dynamics in complex adaptive systems, has provided a robust, invaluable foundation for sound environmental management. Reforming American law to incorporate this knowledge is the key to sustainability. This volume features top legal and resilience scholars speaking on resilience theory and its legal applications to climate change, biodiversity, national parks, and water law.

Spatial Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems

Spatial Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
Author: Graeme S. Cumming
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2011-02-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400703074

Spatial Resilience is a new and exciting area of interdisciplinary research. It focuses on the influence of spatial variation – including such things as spatial location, context, connectivity, and dispersal – on the resilience of complex systems, and on the roles that resilience and self-organization play in generating spatial variation. Prof. Cumming provides a readable introduction and a first comprehensive synthesis covering the core concepts and applications of spatial resilience to the study of social-ecological systems. The book follows a trajectory from concepts through models, methods, and case study analysis before revisiting the central problems in the further conceptual development of the field. In the process, the author ranges from the movements of lions in northern Zimbabwe to the urban jungles of Europe, and from the collapse of past societies to the social impacts of modern conflict. The many case studies and examples discussed in the book show how the concept of spatial resilience can generate valuable insights into the spatial dynamics of social-ecological systems and contribute to solving some of the most pressing problems of our time. Although it has been written primarily for students, this book will provide fascinating reading for interdisciplinary scientists at all career stages as well as for the interested public. "Graeme Cumming, central in the development of resilience thinking and theory, has produced a wonderful book on spatial resilience, the first ever on this topic. The book will become a shining star, a classic in the explosion of new ideas and approaches to studying and understanding social-ecological systems." Carl Folke, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden

Social-Ecological Resilience and Sustainability

Social-Ecological Resilience and Sustainability
Author: Shelley Ross Saxer
Publisher: Aspen Publishing
Total Pages: 723
Release: 2018-02-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1454898356

Social-Ecological Resilience and Sustainability by Shelley Ross Saxer and Jonathan Rosenbloom is designed to help students understand and address new, changing, and complex economic, environmental, and social systems. This book introduces resilience and sustainability as analytical frameworks and illustrates how these concepts apply in various contexts: water, food, shelter/land use, energy, natural resources, pollution, disaster law, and climate change. The first two chapters (Part I) provide students with a conceptual foundation to explore the interdisciplinary nature of resilience and sustainability and the meanings of, complexities embedded in, and the overlap and differences between these frameworks. Each of the remaining eight chapters (Part II) views resilience and sustainability in a specific law and policy context. Strategically placed throughout Part II, the authors describe eight useful tools — “Strategies to Facilitate Implementation”—to help identify, assess, integrate, or utilize resilience and sustainability as analytical frameworks. Key Features: A two-part approach that first provides students with a conceptual foundation and then allows students to view resilience and sustainability in eight law and policy contexts (described above) Numerous graphics throughout to illustrate concepts, depict events described, and otherwise enliven the content Case studies that examine human decisions that led to unsustainable and non-resilient systems and societies New and innovative ways to explain complex systems and in turn rethink traditional notions of law and policy

Principles for Building Resilience

Principles for Building Resilience
Author: Reinette Biggs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2015-04-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 110708265X

Reflecting the very latest research, this book provides an in-depth review of the role of resilience in the management of social-ecological systems and the ecosystem services they provide. Leaders in the field outline seven principles for building resilience in social-ecological systems, examining how these can be applied to advance sustainability.

Socio-Ecological Resilience to Climate Change in a Fragile Ecosystem

Socio-Ecological Resilience to Climate Change in a Fragile Ecosystem
Author: Sosten Chiotha
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2018-06-13
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1351057081

The Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Programme was a seven-year research and development programme in Malawi that concluded in March 2017. The programme was designed to protect the livelihoods of the population and enhance resilience of the natural resource base upon which it depends. The Lake Chilwa Basin is an important wetland ecosystem which is a designated Ramsar Site under the Ramsar Wetland Convention and a Man and Biosphere Reserve designated by UNESCO. This book provides a review of the research and programme interventions done based on the ecosystem approach (EA), a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources. This is designed to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way in its implementation of mitigation and climate change adaptation interventions. It is shown how: local and district institutions were strengthened to better manage natural resources and build resilience to climate change; cross-basin and cross-sector natural resource management and planning for climate change throughout the Basin were built; household and enterprise adaptive capacity in Basin hotspots was built; and improved forest management and governance contributed in mitigating the effects of climate change. The study followed all the twelve key EA principles with involvement of all key stakeholders. It is one of the first programmes to apply EA on such a wide temporal and spatial scale and provides key lessons to be learned for the protection of other fragile ecosystems in an era of climate change.

Ecological Resilience

Ecological Resilience
Author: Kimberly Etingoff
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2016-03-30
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1771883111

This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. This book presents the latest research on resilience strategies around the world. Research such as this is necessary to create new ideas and to evaluate established ones in an effort to make communities more adaptable and to increase people's survival and quality of life while living with the re

Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design

Resilience in Ecology and Urban Design
Author: S.T.A. Pickett
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2013-01-13
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400753411

The contributors to this volume propose strategies of urgent and vital importance that aim to make today’s urban environments more resilient. Resilience, the ability of complex systems to adapt to changing conditions, is a key frontier in ecological research and is especially relevant in creative urban design, as urban areas exemplify complex systems. With something approaching half of the world’s population now residing in coastal urban zones, many of which are vulnerable both to floods originating inland and rising sea levels, making urban areas more robust in the face of environmental threats must be a policy ambition of the highest priority. The complexity of urban areas results from their spatial heterogeneity, their intertwined material and energy fluxes, and the integration of social and natural processes. All of these features can be altered by intentional planning and design. The complex, integrated suite of urban structures and processes together affect the adaptive resilience of urban systems, but also presupposes that planners can intervene in positive ways. As examples accumulate of linkage between sustainability and building/landscape design, such as the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park and Toronto’s Lower Don River area, this book unites the ideas, data, and insights of ecologists and related scientists with those of urban designers. It aims to integrate a formerly atomized dialog to help both disciplines promote urban resilience.

Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems

Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
Author: Marianne E. Krasny
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317966538

Resilience thinking challenges us to reconsider the meaning of sustainability in a world that must constantly adapt in the face of gradual and at times catastrophic change. This volume further asks environmental education and resource management scholars to consider the relationship of environmental learning and behaviours to attributes of resilient social-ecological systems - attributes such as ecosystem services, innovative governance structures, biological and cultural diversity, and social capital. Similar to current approaches to environmental education and education for sustainable development, resilience scholarship integrates social and ecological perspectives. The authors of Resilience in social-ecological systems: the role of learning and education present a wealth of perspectives, integrating theory with reviews of empirical studies in natural resource management, and in youth, adult, and higher education. The authors explore the role of education and learning in helping social-ecological systems as they respond to change, through adaptation and transformation. This book also serves to integrate a growing literature on resilience and social learning in natural resources management, with research in environmental education and education for sustainable development. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Engineering Within Ecological Constraints

Engineering Within Ecological Constraints
Author: National Academy of Engineering
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 1996-03-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 030917645X

Engineering within Ecological Constraints presents a rare dialogue between engineers and environmental scientists as they consider the many technical as well as social and legal challenges of ecologically sensitive engineering. The volume looks at the concepts of scale, resilience, and chaos as they apply to the points where the ecological life support system of nature interacts with the technological life support system created by humankind. Among the questions addressed are: What are the implications of differences between ecological and engineering concepts of efficiency and stability? How can engineering solutions to immediate problems be made compatible with long-term ecological concerns? How can we transfer ecological principles to economic systems? The book also includes important case studies on such topics as water management in southern Florida and California and oil exploration in rain forests. From its conceptual discussions to the practical experience reflected in case studies, this volume will be important to policymakers, practitioners, researchers, educators, and students in the fields of engineering, environmental science, and environmental policy.