Resilience & Resistence

Resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to regain distinguishing characteristics following a severe disturbance or interruption amongst normal ecosystem processes. Conversely, resistance is the ability of that same ecosystem to maintain those characteristics despite the ruthlessness of the interruption. Following a difficult and severe disturbance thresholds are crossed when the ecosystem does not return to its original state via natural processes. Because of this management goals often include providing and continuing ecosystem resilience and resistance.

A lot of times actively managing for these processes will encourage productivity by providing more favorable growing conditions, promote faster recovery after a disturbance, provide a more stimulated response to invasive species and encourage amplitude at a local level. If you were to try and restore a site using the concepts surrounding resistance and resilience you would first need to investigate environmental characteristics, vegetation types and local ecology at a landscape scale. Second, you might considering looking into understanding both resistance and resilience and their relationships to the ecosystem. Lastly, you would want to preserve, conserve, and utilize these concepts while actively prioritizing management activities.