In
ecology,
resilience is the capacity of an
ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or
disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Such perturbations and disturbances can include
stochastic events such as
fires,
flooding,
windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as
deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil, and the
introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient
magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a
threshold beyond which a different
regime of processes and structures predominates. Human activities that adversely affect ecosystem resilience such as reduction of
biodiversity, exploitation of natural resources,
pollution, land-use, and
anthropogenic climate change are increasingly causing
regime shifts in ecosystems, often to less desirable and degraded conditions. Interdisciplinary discourse on resilience now includes consideration of the interactions of humans and ecosystems via socio-ecological systems, and the need for shift from the
maximum sustainable yield paradigm to
environmental resource management which aims to build ecological resilience through "resilience analysis, adaptive resource management, and adaptive governance".