Resilience

Resilience is the term used to describe the extent to which an ecological system responds to disturbances without substantially changing its structure and function (Holling 1972). For instance, imagine two lakes, one that includes only a small number of species and/or functional groups of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish, and another that has multiple species and/or functional groups in each of those categories. The simple lake ecosystem will probably be less able to maintain its previous structure and function after major disturbances such as massive nutrient loading, warming, or changes in seasonal timing of events than the second lake. An often-forgotten second component to the resilience concept that Holling (1972) described is that frequent disturbances help select for characteristics among component populations that lead to greater resilience.