Principles of ecosystem stewardship: resilience-based natural resource management in a changing world (original) (raw)
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Principles of Ecosystem Stewardship
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Resilience in ecosystemic context: Evolution of the concept
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 2001
The evolution of the resilience literature across diverse social science disciplines over the past two decades is reviewed and a synthesis of recentfindings is offered, suggesting that resilience is a multidetermined and ever-changing product of interacting forces within a given ecosystemic context. Emerging constructions of the concept are examined, and a refined working definition is proposed. Implications for research and practice are offered.
Ecological resilience in a changing world
Francisco-USF. Author of several books by the main Brazilian publishers-Atlas (GEN Group), Pearson, Saraiva among otherswith several scientific articles published in Brazil and abroad with a main focus on sustainability. Creator of the Poliseres/biodiversity website. He received from the Mackenzie Presbyterian University a certificate of Honorable Mention in recognition of the excellence of scientific production. In google Scholar its index H = 27.
The Concept of Resilience in Ecological Risk Assessment: Scientific and Regulatory Issues
Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 2018
Resilience represents one of the key components of the vulnerability of ecological systems and may refer to different levels of biological organization, from populations to the biosphere. A short description is given on the concept of resilience applied to the levels that are directly involved in ecological risk assessment (ERA): populations, communities, and ecosystems. The opportunities and challenges for measuring and quantifying resilience are discussed. Finally, some suggestions for introducing the resilience concept in regulatory ERA are proposed.
Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?
Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 2006
Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance.
Ensuring ecosystem resilience is an intuitive approach to safeguard future provisioning of ecosystem services (ES). However, resilience is an ambiguous concept and difficult to operationalize. Focusing on resilience mechanisms, such as diversity, network architectures or adaptive capacity, has recently been suggested as means to operationalize resilience. Still, the focus on mechanisms is not specific enough because the usefulness of a mechanism is context-dependent. We suggest a conceptual framework, resilience trinity, to facilitate management of resilience mechanisms in three distinctive decision contexts and time-horizons. i) reactive, when there is an imminent threat to ES resilience and a high pressure to act, ii) adjustive, when the threat is known in general but there is still time to adapt management, and iii) provident when time horizons are very long and the nature of the threats is uncertain, leading to a low willingness to act. This emphasizes that resilience has differ...
Toward Principles for Enhancing the Resilience of Ecosystem Services
Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 2012
Enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services (ES) that underpin human well-being is critical for meeting current and future societal needs, and requires specific governance and management policies. Using the literature, we identify seven generic policy-relevant principles for enhancing the resilience of desired ES in the face of disturbance and ongoing change in socialecological systems (SES). These principles are (P1) maintain diversity and redundancy, (P2) manage connectivity, (P3) manage slow variables and feedbacks, (P4) foster an understanding of SES as complex adaptive systems (CAS), (P5) encourage learning and experimentation, (P6) broaden participation, and (P7) promote polycentric governance systems. We briefly define each principle, review how and when it enhances the resilience of ES, and conclude with major research gaps. In practice, the principles often co-occur and are highly interdependent. Key future needs are to better understand these interdependencies and to operationalize and apply the principles in different policy and management contexts.
Operationalizing ecological robustness and resilience for ecosystem based management
2012
The goal of an ecosystem based approach to management is to preserve robust ecosystems that can cope with the environmental pressure imposed by human activities. Vulnerable ecosystems exposed to strong environmental perturbation are at high risk of large impact. Ecosystem based management can mitigate impact by dealing with ecosystem properties that influence vulnerability. The challenge is to identify relevant ecosystem properties that can be effectively integrated in assessment and decision making so as to operationalize ecological robustness and resilience. Here we present the approach used in the project BarEcoRe to quantify, evaluate and integrate an ensemble of structural properties affecting ecosystem adaptability and sensitivity to environmental change. The ecosystem properties, which include functional diversity and redundancy, and food web compartmentalization, were quantified based on data from the Norwegian and Russian Barents Sea ecosystem surveys. The chosen structural...