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Natural Resources and Conservation

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

2019

Discontinuities

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Natural Resources Management and Policy

The Adaptive Cycle: More Than A Metaphor, Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen Jun 2019

The Adaptive Cycle: More Than A Metaphor, Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The adaptive cycle and its extension to panarchy (nested adaptive cycles) has been a useful metaphor and conceptual model for understanding long-term dynamics of change in ecological and social–ecological systems. We argue that adaptive cycles are ubiquitous in complex adaptive systems because they reflect endogenously generated dynamics as a result of processes of self-organization and evolution. We synthesize work from a wide array of fields to support this claim. If dynamics of growth, conservation, collapse and renewal are endogenous dynamics of complex adaptive systems, then there ought to be signals of system change over time that reflect this. We describe …


Discontinuity Analysis Reveals Alternative Community Regimes During Phytoplankton Succession, David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr., Monika Winder May 2019

Discontinuity Analysis Reveals Alternative Community Regimes During Phytoplankton Succession, David G. Angeler, Craig R. Allen, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr., Monika Winder

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

It is well-recognized in plankton ecology that phytoplankton development can lead to distinct peaks (i.e., blooms) during spring and summer. We used a 5-year (2007–2011) phytoplankton data set and utilized discontinuity analysis to assess resilience attributes of spring and summer blooms based on the cross-scale resilience model. Using the size structure (i.e., cross-scale structure as an indicator of resilience) in the sampled plankton data, we assessed whether spring and summer blooms differ substantially between but not within blooms; that is, whether they comprise alternative community regimes. Our exploratory study supported this expectation and more broadly resilience theory, which posits that …


The Adaptive Cycle: More Than A Metaphor, Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen Jan 2019

The Adaptive Cycle: More Than A Metaphor, Shana M. Sundstrom, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The adaptive cycle and its extension to panarchy (nested adaptive cycles) has been a useful metaphor and conceptual model for understanding long-term dynamics of change in ecological and social–ecological systems. We argue that adaptive cycles are ubiquitous in complex adaptive systems because they reflect endogenously generated dynamics as a result of processes of self-organization and evolution. We synthesize work from a wide array of fields to support this claim. If dynamics of growth, conservation, collapse and renewal are endogenous dynamics of complex adaptive systems, then there ought to be signals of system change over time that reflect this. We describe …