Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Quantitative Framework For Assessing Ecological Resilience, Didier L. Baho, Craig R. Allen, Ahjond Garmestani, Hannah Fried-Petersen, Sophia E. Renes, Lance Gunderson, David G. Angeler

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Quantitative approaches to measure and assess resilience are needed to bridge gaps between science, policy, and management. In this paper, we suggest a quantitative framework for assessing ecological resilience. Ecological resilience as an emergent ecosystem phenomenon can be decomposed into complementary attributes (scales, adaptive capacity, thresholds, and alternative regimes) that embrace the complexity inherent to ecosystems. Quantifying these attributes simultaneously provides opportunities to move from the assessment of specific resilience within an ecosystem toward a broader measurement of its general resilience. We provide a framework that is based on reiterative testing and recalibration of hypotheses that assess complementary attributes of …