The resilience perspective is increasingly used as an approach for understanding the dynamics of social–ecological systems. This article presents the origin of the resilience perspective and provides an overview of its development to date. With roots in one branch of ecology and the discovery of multiple basins of attraction in ecosystems in the 1960–1970s, it inspired social and environmental scientists to challenge the dominant stable equilibrium view. The resilience approach emphasizes non-linear dynamics, thresholds, uncertainty and surprise, how periods of gradual change interplay with periods of rapid change and how such dynamics interact across temporal and spatial scales. The history was dominated by empirical observations of ecosystem dynamics interpreted in mathematical models, developing into the adaptive management approach for responding to ecosystem change. Serious attempts to integrate the social dimension is currently taking place in resilience work reflected in the large numbers of sciences involved in explorative studies and new discoveries of linked social–ecological systems. Recent advances include understanding of social processes like, social learning and social memory, mental models and knowledge–system integration, visioning and scenario building, leadership, agents and actor groups, social networks, institutional and organizational inertia and change, adaptive capacity, transformability and systems of adaptive governance that allow for management of essential ecosystem services.

Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses

The author challenges the traditional approach to dealing with uncertainty in the management of such renewable resources as fish and wildlife. He argues that scientific understanding will come from the experience of management as an ongoing, adaptive, and experimental process, rather than through basic research or the development of ecological theory. 

The opening chapters review approaches to formulating management objectives as well as models for understanding how policy choices affect the attainment of these objectives. Subsequent chapters present various statistical methods for understanding the dynamics of uncertainty in managed fish and wildlife populations and for seeking optimum harvest policies in the face of uncertainty. The book concludes with a look at prospects for adaptive management of complex systems, emphasizing such human factors involved in decision making as risk aversion and conflicting objectives as well as biophysical factors. Throughout the text dynamic models and Bayesian statistical theory are used as tools for understanding the behavior of managed systems. These tools are illustrated with simple graphs and plots of data from representative cases. 

This text/reference will serve researchers, graduate students, and resource managers who formulate harvest policies and study the dynamics of harvest populations, as well as analysts (modelers, statisticians, and stock assessment experts) who are concerned with the practice of policy design.

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/bay_delta/docs/cmnt081712/dfg/cdfgwalters1986.pdf

Adaptive Management of Renewable Resources

https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/psycann/1976-12-6-12/{806b8887-c02e-40c8-a228-57f1cdb2bdba}/the-stress-of-life.pdf

The stress of life

Approaches to natural resource management are often based on a presumed ability to predict probabilistic responses to management and external drivers such as climate. They also tend to assume that the manager is outside the system being managed. However, where the objectives include long-term sustainability, linked social-ecological systems (SESs) behave as complex adaptive systems, with the managers as integral components of the system. Moreover, uncertainties are large and it may be difficult to reduce them as fast as the system changes. Sustainability involves maintaining the functionality of a system when it is perturbed, or maintaining the elements needed to renew or reorganize if a large perturbation radically alters structure and function. The ability to do this is termed "resilience." This paper presents an evolving approach to analyzing resilience in SESs, as a basis for managing resilience. We propose a framework with four steps, involving close involvement of SES stakeholders. It begins with a stakeholder-led development of a conceptual model of the system, including its historical profile (how it got to be what it is) and preliminary assessments of the drivers of the supply of key ecosystem goods and services. Step 2 deals with identifying the range of unpredictable and uncontrollable drivers, stakeholder visions for the future, and contrasting possible future policies, weaving these three factors into a limited set of future scenarios. Step 3 uses the outputs from steps 1 and 2 to explore the SES for resilience in an iterative way. It generally includes the development of simple models of the system's dynamics for exploring attributes that affect resilience. Step 4 is a stakeholder evaluation of the process and outcomes in terms of policy and management implications. This approach to resilience analysis is illustrated using two stylized examples.

/pdf/resilience-management-in-social-ecological-systems-a-working-1fcwae7f7s.pdf

Resilience Management in Social-ecological Systems: a Working Hypothesis for a Participatory Approach

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was
jointly established by the World Meteorological Organization
and the United Nations Environment Programme in 1988 to
assess the scientific and technical literature on climate change,
the potential impacts of changes in climate, and options for
adaption to and mitigation of climate change. Since its inception,
the IPCC has produced a series of Assessment Reports,
Special Reports, Technical Papers, methodologies and other
products which have become standard works of reference,
widely used by policymakers, scientists and other experts.
This Special Report, which has been produced by Working
Group II of the IPCC, builds on the Working Group's contribution
to the Second Assessment Report (SAR), and incorporates
more recent information made available since mid-1995.
It has been prepared in response to a request from the
Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice
(SBSTA) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC). It addresses an important question posed
by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC,
namely, the degree to which human conditions and the natural
environment are vulnerable to the potential effects of climate
change. The report establishes a common base of information
regarding the potential costs and benefits of climatic change,
including the evaluation of uncertainties, to help the COP
determine what adaptation and mitigation measures might be
justified. The report consists of vulnerability assessments for
10 regions that comprise the Earth's entire land surface and
adjoining coastal seas: Africa, Arid Western Asia (including the
Middle East), Australasia, Europe, Latin America, North
America, the Polar Regions (The Arctic and the Antarctic),
Small Island States, Temperate Asia and Tropical Asia. It also
includes several annexes that provide information about climate
observations, climate projections, vegetation distribution
projections and socioeconomic trends.

/pdf/the-regional-impacts-of-climate-change-an-assessment-of-49ii958car.pdf

The Regional Impacts of Climate Change: An Assessment of Vulnerability

An ecosystem approach for sustainability: addressing the challenge of complexity

The physiological basis for well-known correlations between summer air temperature indices and year-class strength in northern smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieui) populations was examined. Field and laboratory studies demonstrated the existence of two critical stages in early life when smallmouth bass are particularly vulnerable to features characteristic of many natural water temperature regimes. The first stage extends from fertilization until the young leave the nest; high mortality results from exposure to extreme temperatures. The second stage extends over the first winter, when the young subsist on accumulated energy reserves. Because the ratio of energy stored to basal metabolic rate increases with size, large fish can withstand winter starvation better than small fish. The results from these and other studies were incorporated into a deterministic model of the relations between temperature and first-year survival of small-mouth bass. Analysis of water temperature time series data from...

Stochastic Simulation of Temperature Effects on First-Year Survival of Smallmouth Bass

Measures of thermal habitat space were developed by integrating, over time during the summer period, the amount of lake bottom area and pelagic volume with water temperatures within species' optimal thermal niches. These species' specific measures, thermal habitat area, THA (hectares per 10 d), and thermal habitat volume, THV (cubic hectometres per 10 d), were used as predictor variables in regression equations estimating the total sustained yield, SY (kilograms per year), of each of four commercially important species: lake trout, Salvelinus namaycush; lake whitefish, Coregonus Clupeaformis; walleye, Stizostedion vitreum vitreum; and northern pike, Esox lucius. One or both of THA and THV were strongly correlated with SY for each of the four species for a set of 21 large north-temperate lakes. Several other habitat variables were assessed with respect to species' SY: total lake area and volume, mean depth, total dissolved solids, and the ratio of the latter two as R. A. Ryder's morphoedaphic index. The va...

Measures of Optimal Thermal Habitat and Their Relationship to Yields for Four Commercial Fish Species

Many mathematical relationships have been used to summarize quantitative information about the effects of temperature on rate processes in ectothermic living systems. One of the more common relationships, which has been used for a century, is here termed the “combined exponential model.” An exponential model, as with a first-order chemical reaction, is used to define a coefficient for a rate at a particular temperature; another exponential relationship (of the van't Hoff or the Arrhenius form) is then used to relate the coefficients of the rate process to their respective temperatures. The Arrhenius form has come to be preferred over the van't Hoff form. In ectotherm physiology, the combined exponential model applies when the relevant organism has not evolved means of compensating biologically for the underlying physicochemical dynamics as affected by temperature, Here we assess the applicability of the combined model, of the Arrhenius form, to analogous ecological situations for aquatic ectother...

Influence of Temperature Changes on Aquatic Ecosystems: An Interpretation of Empirical Data

Fish production and yields from natural lakes are related to morphoedaphic factors and regional differences in climate. To quantify the relationships on a global scale, climatic data and estimates of fish yield, total dissolved solids, and mean depth were compiled for natural lakes located between 62°N and 15°S latitude. Stepwise regression analyses showed that for intensively fished lakes (N = 43), the climatic index “mean annual air temperature” accounts for 74% of the variability of maximum sustainable yield (MSY). The morphoedaphic index (MEI), expressed as total dissolved solids divided by mean depth, accounts for an additional 7–9% of the MSY variability. This contrasts with regional studies in which the MEI usually accounts for a greater percentage of yield variability than do climatic variables. Equations presented in this study can be used to predict approximate potential yields from lakes that are currently experiencing little or no fishing pressure.

Henry A. Regier

Papers

An ecosystem approach for sustainability: addressing the challenge of complexity

Stochastic Simulation of Temperature Effects on First-Year Survival of Smallmouth Bass

Measures of Optimal Thermal Habitat and Their Relationship to Yields for Four Commercial Fish Species

Influence of Temperature Changes on Aquatic Ecosystems: An Interpretation of Empirical Data

Climatic and Morphoedaphic Indices of Fish Yields from Natural Lakes