Book ID: 97534
Gunderson, Lance H., Craig R. Allen and C.S. Holling (eds.)
Foundations of Ecological Resilience.2010. XXV, 466 p. gr8vo. Hardcover.
Ecological resilience provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how complex systems adapt to and recoverfrom localized disturbances like hurricanes, fires, pest outbreaks, and floods, as well as large-scale perturbations such as climate change. Ecologists have developed resilience theory over the past three decades in an effort to explain surprising and nonlinear dynamics of complex adaptive systems. Resilience theory is especially important to environmental scientists for its role in underpinning adaptive management approaches to ecosystem and resource management. The book is a collection of the most important articles on the subject of ecological resilience, those writings that have defined and developed basic concepts in the field and help explain its importance and meaning for scientists and researchers. The book's editors, who are leading experts on the subject, compile and synthesize the key scientific papers that have led to our current understanding of resilience, and provide concise commentary that discusses the impact and importance of each contribution. The focus of the book is on resilience of ecological systems, and the organization is both chronological and categorical.