Towards a Comparable Quantification of Resilience

Abstract

Resilience is a key concept in ecology and describes the capacity of an ecosystem to maintain its state and recover from disturbances. Numerous metrics have been applied to quantify resilience over a range of ecosystems. However, the way resilience is quantified affects the degree to which different trajectories of ecosystem recovery from disturbance are represented as 'resilient', precluding a comparison of disturbance responses across ecosystems and their properties and functions. To approach a broadly comparable assessment of resilience we suggest using a bivariate framework that jointly considers the disturbance impact and the recovery rate, both normalized to the undisturbed state of a system. We demonstrate the potential of the framework for attribution and integration across the various components underlying resilience.

Keywords: disturbance impact; recovery rate; recovery time; resilience index; resilience metric; resistance.