Resilience: Easy to use but hard to define

Abstract

First conceptualized in the 1970s, resilience has become a popular term in the ecological literature, used in the title, abstract, or keywords of approximately 1% of papers identified by ISI Web of Science in the field of environmental sciences and ecology in 2011. However, many papers make only passing reference to the term and do not explain what resilience means in the context of their study system, despite there being a number of possible definitions. In an attempt to determine how resilience is being used in ecological studies, we surveyed 234 papers published between 2004 and 2011 that were identified under the topic "resilience" by ISI Web of Science. Of these, 38% used the word resilience fewer than three times (often in the abstract or keyword list), 66% did not define the term, and 71% did not provide a citation to the resilience literature. Studies that defined resilience most often discussed it as pertaining to an entire ecosystem under continuous rather than discrete disturbance. Given the complex nature of this concept, we believe that care should be taken to properly describe what is meant by the term resilience in ecological studies.

Resilience in ecology: Abstraction, distraction, or where the action is?

“…Resilience was introduced to the ecological literature with a clear and specific definition (Holling, 1973), but nowadays resilience is most often used in a vague and undefined manner, as a hook to attract an audience rather than being a truly meaningful concept driving research or conservation outcomes (Brand and Jax, 2007;Myers-Smith et al, 2012). Despite conceptual vagueness, its intuitive appeal is evident in its wide-spread adoption in policy and management documents (e.g., Benson and Garmestani, 2011).…”

The application of resilience concepts in palaeoecology

“…These three components jointly comprise a 'response model' (Fig. 4), that is, an explicit statement of the anticipated relationships between proxies, disturbances and resilience properties , Myers-Smith et al 2012, Hodgson et al 2015. A response model should provide the necessary conceptual (heuristic) and measurable (quantitative) framework for assessing long-term ecosystem resilience.…”

Balls, cups, and quasi-potentials: quantifying stability in stochastic systems

“…In a large review of the ecological literature, Myers-Smith et al ( 2012 ) found that resilience was used in many ambiguous and contradictory ways. Some authors, like Holling ( 1973 ) view stability and resilience as distinct properties; others, like Harrison ( 1979 ) defi ne resilience as a single aspect of stability.…”