2018 ESA Annual Meeting (August 5 -- 10)

SYMP 7 - From Theory to Application: Addressing Outstanding Challenges to Operationalizing Resilience

Tuesday, August 7, 2018: 1:30 PM-5:00 PM
River Bend 1, New Orleans Downtown Marriott at the Convention Center
Organizer:
Carl Boettiger
Co-organizers:
Ryan Batt and Vasilis Dakos
Moderator:
Vasilis Dakos
The sustainability of ecosystem services and human well-being depends on ecosystem resilience to abrupt changes from external shocks and internal tipping points. With a long history in ecology going back to Holling, resilience thinking has taken on different guises, with the ever present challenge of translating compelling but abstract ideas into practical applications. A common stumbling block to managing and preparing for ecological change is the difficulty of obtaining detailed knowledge of complex ecological mechanisms. Our session will highlight recent progress in how resilience theory provides a different approach, and possibly a solution, to this long standing challenge. Resilience theory implies that, by harnessing characteristic behavior of complex systems, we can reduce ecosystem sensitivity to stress or anticipate ecosystem changes without perfect knowledge of ecological mechanisms. Yet, operationalizing resilience requires addressing outstanding theoretical and applied questions covering complementary aspects of resilience. What does it mean for an equation to be robust to mechanism? For a population of New Mexico’s desert mammals to enter a new regime? For coastal fishing communities to be resilient? How does ecological resilience manifest in environmental policy and law? Fundamentally, resilience is the ability to withstand shocks and resist abrupt change. Often, avoiding changes in ecosystems is an important management goal when human or environmental perturbations threaten to erode an ecosystem service. Sometimes the best way to withstand shocks is the ability to bend and recover, sometimes it is our management policy which must adapt. Sometimes the need to intervene in and alter the management of an ecosystem is precipitated by knowledge of its imminent change. Just as we can build resilience to avoid change, we might also be able to anticipate or provide “early warnings” of change by monitoring for loss of resilience. In the past decade, much attention has been paid to these “universal” early warning indicators that would allow us to predict and possibly forestall catastrophic regime shifts in socio-ecological systems. In this symposium, we bring you news of the opportunities and challenges of operationalizing resilience. Our panel of early career researchers will take you across the arc of perspectives which spans mathematics, ecology and law to illustrate a common thread of opportunities and challenges in operationalizing resilience in these areas. Following the talks, a discussion with our panel of speakers will invite you to share your perspectives.
1:30 PM
Early warning indicators: News from the theoretical frontier
Suzanne M. O'Regan, North Carolina A&T State University
2:00 PM
Evidence of rapid transitions in long-term community data
Erica Christensen, University of Florida; David Harris, University of Florida; Renata Diaz, University of Florida; S.K. Morgan Ernest, University of Florida
2:30 PM
Unifying resilience thinking and optimal control
Carl Boettiger, U.C. Berkeley
3:00 PM
3:10 PM
Dynamic indicators of ecosystem resilience
Hao Ye, University of Florida; Erica Christensen, University of Florida; S.K. Morgan Ernest, University of Florida; Juniper L. Simonis, University of Florida, DAPPER Stats; Ethan P. White, University of Florida
3:40 PM
The time scale of early warnings: Operationalizing resilience-based forecasting for management and governance
Ryan D. Batt, National Academy of Sciences/ US Environmental Protection Agency; Tarsha Eason, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Stephen R. Carpenter, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Ahjond Garmestani, US Environmental Protection Agency
4:10 PM
Operationalizing resilience in law to manage social-ecological feedbacks in rangelands
Carissa Wonkka, University of Nebraska; Dirac Twidwell, University of Nebraska - Lincoln; Hsiao-Hsuan Wang, Texas A&M University; William E. Grant, Texas A&M University
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