Operationalizing resilience for conservation objectives: the 4S's

Abstract

Although resilience thinking is increasingly popular and attractive among restoration practitioners, it carries an abstract quality that hinders effective application. Because resilience and its components are defined differently in social and ecological contexts, individual managers or stakeholders may disagree on the definition of a system's state, occurrence of a state change, preferred state characteristics, and appropriate methods to achieve success. Nevertheless, incentives and mandates often force managers to demonstrate how their work enhances resilience. Unclear or conflicting definitions can lead to ineffective or even detrimental decision-making in the name of resilience; essentially, any convenient action can be touted as resilience-enhancing in this case. We contend that any successful resilience management project must clearly identify up-front the stressors of concern, state traits, scales of appropriate management, and success indicators (the 4S's) relevant to the management targets. We propose a deliberate process for determining these components in advance of resilience management for conservation. Our recommendations were inspired and informed by two case studies wherein different definitions of stressors, state, scales, and success would result in very different management choices, with potentially serious consequences for biodiversity targets. Conceptual Implications• Resilience management attempts to align abstract concepts with real-world challenges, and different perspectives may yield very different decisions. • A priori identification of the ecological and social characteristics of a particular system is essential to ensure that stakeholders are in agreement about focal system state, scale, stressors, and success. • A proactive approach to defining resilience in a particular system should occur prior to management implementation so that success can be understood and recognized.

Implications of non-native species for mutualistic network resistance and resilience

“…Clear definitions of ecosystem state can be elusive [5], so a state change can also be hard to definitively describe. However, in concept, resistance and resilience can be distinguished by degree.…”

Making the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration a Social-Ecological Endeavour

“…Social-ecological systems researchers have synthesized seven key principles that typically enhance the resilience and adaptability of systems [19,20]. Their relevance for social-ecological restoration was recently reviewed in depth by Krievins et al [28] and Aslan et al [29]. Given these in-depth reviews, we provide only a short overview here, highlighting parallels between a more disciplinary ecological focus and a more interdisciplinary socialecological perspective.…”

The forgotten fauna: Native vertebrate seed predators on islands

“…To that end, the restoration of pollination and seed dispersal processes is increasingly used as a measure of conservation success (e.g. Aslan, Petersen, Shiels, Haines, & Liang, 2018;Forup, Henson, Craze, & Memmott, 2008). While the restoration of mutualistic processes is inarguably crucial, antagonistic interactions, such as resource competition, parasitism, foliar herbivory, seed predation and animal predation were also a part of these island systems before humans arrived.…”