resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties
resistance: the ability not to be affected by change.
These simple definitions are just a fraction of the meaning these words hold. These two terms are very important to ecology and to the preservation of our natural environment. With resilience we have the ability to recover from damages, such as fires, flooding, earth quakes, ect. This is important for an ecosystem to be able to bounce back after prevents disaster.
Resistance prevents the ecosystem from being effected at all from any sort of change or damages. This usually comes about after first being exposed to damages in the first place, like fire clearing out a pine forest. After a time, some areas will become stronger against devastations. Thus, the ecosystem evolves to become stronger against change.
Kara,
ReplyDeleteKnowing the resistance and resilience levels of a species or an ecosystem can aid natural resource managers in the making educated decisions during their management process. I found a neat link that describes resilience and resistance in sagebrush ecosystems (one of my favorites) that might prove to be interesting to you as well.
Here it is: https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70128736
Ashley