Resilience

Definition:
Resilience, in the ecological sense, refers to the ability of a system to absorb
external or internal shocks and still retain its fundamental form and function. In
other words, it remains in the same regimen of controlling factors. The ability to
restructure after such shocks is a characteristic of resilient systems. A
metaphorical description of resilience is an evolutionary one: resilient systems
are those that can adapt to change, and remain in the game. Notably, resilience
does not mean that a system will not experience internal change in response to a
shock, stress, or disturbance. Rather, it means that the system can adjust itself
after the shock and keep the same general identity.

Figure 1. A resilience conceptual landscape. Two different sets of controling

factors are represented by either the solid or the dashed curve. The black ball
represents the system composition and function under the solid regime, and the
threshold to a different realm of environmental control is shown at the top of the
hill to the right. If disturbances, represented by the single-headed arrows, do
not move the system beyond the threshold, the system is said to be resilient. It
can absorb the shocks of the disturbance and retain its qualitative identity,
though there may be internal changes as a result of the disturbance, and those
would elicit adaptive responses. If a disturbance pushes the system beyond the
threshold, or if the environmental conditions change so that it becomes easier or
harder to reach and exceed a threshold, the adaptive requirements for resilience,
and hence the level of resilience would change, as represented by the double headed
arrows and the contrast between the solid and the open systems. From the arctic-
council.org.

It is important to recognize that there are two contrasting definitions of

resilience in circulation. The older one, engineering resilience, is the ability
of a system to absorb a shock or deformation and to return to its original,
equilibrium state. A rubber band is a perfect example of such a system. The
loose, floppy form can be stretched but, when released, it returns to its general
band-like shape. This sort of resilience is called engineering resilience because
it characterizes built structures and infrastructure. Key to this idea is that
there is an acceptable, desired, or equilibrium state of the system. Of course,
extreme deformation or perhaps consistent strong deformation over time can lead the
system to fail: The band breaks when stretched too far, or after years of material
degradation while encircling a thick wad of forgotten papers in a hot attic.

The concept of engineering resilience is consistent with the old, equilibrium

paradigm of ecology, which has been replaced by a more dynamic, non-equilibrium
paradigm. Equilibrium or engineering resilience may be of value when it is
possible to identify a desirable or designed state that is expected to persist over
some specified time or at a particular spatial scale. But for many purposes,
engineering resilience is best considered a narrow, special case of the concept of
resilience. The second definition of resilience is the one introduced at the
beginning of this post, and explained further below.

Ecological resilience is the definition suitable to systems that are not at

equilibrium, or which periodically or constantly change and adjust. Such a dynamic
view of resilience is appropriate to cities, as they are complex, adaptive systems
that have no fixed end point of development, but which embody learning and
adjustment. Furthermore, they are affected by shocks of economic, human
migrational, climate change, and biophysical origin. For example, economic
investment or disinvestment, the arrival of a mass migration, the effects of sea
level rise, or the occurrence of hazards such as floods, can all shock socio-
ecological urban systems.

Examples:

A biological example of resilience can be found in an extensive area of broad-

leaved forest in a moist climate where fire is rare. In such a climate, severe
windstorms, such as tornadoes, would be the primary external agents of disturbance.
In such a forest region, an old, continuous canopy dominated by long-lived trees,
such as beech, maple, and hemlock, might be blown down by a tornado.

Figure 2. A tornado blowdown 31 May 1985, in an old-growth forest in Western

Pennsylvania. The dark red in this false-color infrared image represents intact
canopy, while the lighter tones represent dying foliage of downed trees and exposed
forest floor.

The disturbance event sets in motion a reorganization phase, with some of the
younger damaged trees able to resprout, while trees that have been absent from the
forest at that spot for decades, but whose seeds have lain dormant in the soil,
germinate in response to the altered light and temperature at the surface. The
seeds of other tree species that require high light levels, arrive on the wind, or
are deposited by birds perching on the woody debris and snags left by the tornado.
Understory herbaceous species flourish for a time, reproducing and producing large
numbers of propagules. The forest regrows as the light-demanding species give way
to dominance by the more shade-tolerant species that will ultimately occupy the
overstory. This process of episodic disturbance, reorganization, and regrowth are
all part of the same forest system. The system as a whole is resilient, although
individual components are killed by the tornado, while others take advantage of the
changing conditions produced by the regrowing forest itself. This kind of dynamic
is a source of the insights embodied in the ecological resilience concept (Holling
and Gunderson 2002).

A social model of resilience is represented by the adaptive response of the Chacoan

culture of the US Southwest (Tainter 1988). Within the arid San Juan Basin of New
Mexico, the Chaco Canyon stands out as an arid, but heterogeneous setting. Here
drought is a patchy and asynchronous event. The ancient population initially
organized in dispersed settlements, each experiencing high and low agricultural
production at different rhythms than its nearby neighbors. The principal
settlements included large storage capacities for maize, and were connected by an
efficiently laid out road network. Presumably, such a physical arrangement would
have required administrative capacity, organization of dispersed labor, and sharing
of information to assess, store, and distribute surpluses. This strategy, a
variety of energy averaging, was highly adaptive in this environment. Below a
certain density of settlements, including both the administrative and grain storage
centers represented by Great Houses and the smaller dependencies, would have
effectively averaged energy. The system was resilient, since different areas had
different temporal patterns of agricultural production, and therefore
differentially contributed to or drew on the centralized surpluses.

Resilience is, notably, not guaranteed forever. As the Chacoan population grew
based on increased food security allowed by energy averaging, more settlements were
added. This decreased the average distance between settlements and would have
increased the likelihood that larger numbers of them would experience synchronous
drought and poor harvests.
Figure 3. The topographically heterogeneous landscape of Chaco Canyon, which
allowed the agricultural risk spreading in a drought prone, arid environment.
Photo by Peter Potterfield, http://www.greatoutdoors.com/published/from-chaco-
canyon-to-sky-city

As a result, the adaptive benefit of resource averaging was no longer available.

After that time, the return on the investment in administration, infrastructure,
grain distribution, and labor sharing became insufficient to purchase the loyalty
of outlying settlements and the system then shifted to a completely different realm
of control. In other words, the complex Chacoan civilization collapsed. This
example shows both that social-ecological systems can exhibit resilience through
adaptive behavior, but that it is possible for the interaction of external events
and the structure of the system to cause a collapse into a different regimen of
control.

Why important:
Ecological resilience does not ask whether a complex system returns to a previous
or equilibrium state. Rather, it asks about the changes that a system can
experience and still persist in the same dynamic form. This is an evolutionary
kind of resilience since adaptation is a central feature. So ecological and
evolutionary resilience are concerned with adaptive capacity and adjustment to
change, and not with return to a stable point. Rather than asking about the
ability of a rubber band to return to its unstressed state, evolution asks about
the rubber band becoming something else that is better adapted to the new
conditions. It is of course silly to think about a simple, physical-chemical
system such as a rubber band changing in such a radical way, but evolution,
adaptation, learning, and adjustment are familiar capacities of both biological and
social systems. In other words, they are complex systems that can adapt.
Resilience in the more evolutionary sense is the idea that points toward the
question of how--and how well--a particular system can adapt to changing conditions
or sudden shocks that come at unexpected times.

The concept of ecological resilience is relevant to the BES III main theme of
transition from the Sanitary to the Sustainable City (Pickett et al. 2013b). The
sanitary city identifies a desired state, and seeks to keep structures or processes
at a specified level. Given that societal and regulatory decisions identify legal
or desirable targets for things that people must manage, a classical or engineering
definition provides guidance about how to measure success. However, under changing
environmental conditions, including social, economic, and environmental
alterations, it may be more appropriate to ask about the capacity of the system to
adjust to those changes. Because feedbacks among social, economic, and
environmental factors and processes are integral parts of urban ecosystems, we must
learn to go beyond the engineering resilience concept and understand and use the
contemporary concept of ecological or evolutionary resilience. It is this concept
that can support the desirable goals identified by socially adopted visions for
urban sustainability. Resilience, and its contributing adaptive processes, are the
mechanisms that can promote or inhibit sustainability.

For more information:

Gunderson, L. H. 2000. Ecological resilience - in theory and application.
Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 31:425-439.
Holling, C. S. 1996. Engineering resilience versus ecological resilience.
Pages 31-44 in P. C. Schulze, editor. Engineering within ecological constraints.
National Academies of Engineering, Washington, DC.
Holling, C. S. and L. H. Gunderson. 2002. Resilience and adaptive cycles.
Pages 25-62 in L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, editors. Panarchy: understanding
transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC.
Pickett, S. T. A., M. L. Cadenasso, and B. McGrath, editors. 2013.
Resilience in ecology and urban design: linking theory and practice for sustainable
cities. Springer, New York.
Pickett, S. T. A., C. G. Boone, B. P. McGrath, M. L. Cadenasso, D. L.
Childers, L. A. Ogden, M. McHale, and J. M. Grove. 2013. Ecological science and
transformation to the sustainable city. Cities.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2013.02.008
Redman, C. L. and A. P. Kinzig. 2003. Resilience of past landscapes:
resilience theory, society, and the longue dure. Conservation Ecology 7(1): 14.
[online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss1/art14
Resilience Alliance. http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/resilience
(accessed 29 April 2013)
Tainter, J. A. 1988. The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge
University Press, New York.
See also BES Urban Lexicon terms: Adaptive Processes; Sustainability;
Sustainable City.
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Labels: Resilience
Adaptive Cycle

Definition:
The adaptive cycle is a conceptual model intended to expose the degree to which a
complex system is resilient. It is equally applicable to biophysical systems,
social-economic systems, and joint human-natural systems. It combines insights
about the accumulation of resources or capital within the structure of systems,
with insights about the increasing complexity that results from ecological
succession or social problem solving (Scheffer et al. 2002). The adaptive cycle
acknowledges that episodic stresses and disturbances can cause systems that had
accumulated capital and built complexity to suddenly collapse and reorganize. The
adaptive cycle includes a growth phase, leading to a conservation phase.
Disturbance and stress, whether internal or external, can lead do a release phase,
and if the resource base available to the system is not depleted by the
disturbance, a reorganization phase can set the stage for a subsequent growth phase
(Fig 1).

Figure 1. The adaptive cycle as represented by Biggs et al. (2010).

Cycling through the series of phases repeatedly can maintain a system in a given
structural and functional realm. That is, the system is resilient. Resilience can
be prevented in two general kinds of situation (Biggs et al. 2010): Resource loss
can establish a new system with a different structure on the impoverished resource
base, while social and institutional arrangements that lock in the mechanisms of
conservation can prevent the system from taking advantage of inevitable release.

Examples:
An example of a primarily biophysical adaptive cycle is the patch dynamics of a
desert system driven by animals digging for the bulbs of perennial herbs. For
example, relatives of tulips in the Negev Desert produce below ground bulbs that
are sought out as food by porcupines. Harvesting the bulbs creates a small pit,
roughly 15 cm (6 in) across and equally deep. This activity breaks up the soil
crust, which is a structure consisting of small mosses, lichens, and cyanobacteria
and their sticky byproducts. Such crust retards the infiltration of water, and
prevents wind or water borne seeds of other desert herbs from finding a safe site
to settle. With the crust disrupted, water and organic matter, along with seeds
accumulate in the pit. The pit thus becomes a hospitable site for plant
establishment in the generally arid environment. As the pit fills in with
sediment, it no longer serves the establishment function. In addition, if the
porcupine did not consume the entire bulb, or all bulbs beneath a clump of
perennials, the site can come to support not only the invading annuals, but also a
new generation or reinvigorated perennials. The system as a whole is resilient
because excavation of bulbs, transport of seeds, filling of pits, establishment and
growth of a small plant assemblage in the old pit, and subsequent digging by
porcupines is spatially patchy and asynchronous. In addition, different years
often exhibit different timing and amount of rainfall, further complicating the
spatial and temporal processes. An area of desert on the order of at least a few
hundred square meters thus traces out an adaptive cycle and represents a resilient
system.

Social-ecological adaptive cycles are illustrated on a much larger scale in ancient

Mesopotamia (e.g. Redman and Kinzig 2003). The establishment of urban and
hydrological agriculture are familiar topics. However, they are instructive when
placed in the context of the adaptive cycle. The settlement of the Uruk Period
were widely dispersed and were a novel strategy for exploiting the widely scattered
resources that had not previously been used to generate agricultural capital. This
release phase was followed closely by a reorganization phase in which regional
organization accompanied by writing and shared artistic patterns. This led to an
exploitation phase in which various forms of urbanization, including relationships
to agricultural hinterlands, were tried. This phase was characterized by the
building of regional political arrangements. This organized urban-agricultural
complex was ripe for conquest and the establishment of a complex, administratively
integrated nation state. Codes of law, imperial conquest and colonial
administration emerged during this phase. However, the initial conservative
structures apparently became inflexible in the face of resource fluctuation. The
collapse of the first nation state led to a simplification back to city states.
Such fluctuations in organization continued in Mesopotamia for some 1,500 yr
(Redman and Kinzig 2003). Both social and environmental aspects interact in the
ancient Mesopotamian adaptive cycles.

Why Important?
The adaptive cycle is a model template that helps expose the mechanisms that can
support or prevent resilience in systems (Biggs et al. 2010). The cyclical model
alerts researchers and policy makers concerned with meeting societally constructed
goals of sustainability of the fact that change is a part of urban systems, that
internal and external shocks can change the local structure and function of
neighborhoods, districts, or entire urban agglomerations, and that there are
dangers in losing capital or locking in conservation strategies that prevent
release and reorganization. The cycle helps apply important ideas such as marginal
return on investment in social complexity (Tainter 1988, 2006), and the role of
creative destruction.

For More Information:

Biggs, R., F. R. Westley, and S. R. Carpenter. 2010. Navigating the back
loop: fostering social innovation and transformation in ecosystem management.
Ecology and Society 15:Article 9.
Redman, C. L. and A. P. Kinzig. 2003. Resilience of past landscapes:
resilience theory, society, and the longue duree. Conservation Ecology 7:Article
14. This article not only presents two interesting case studies of applying the
adaptive cycle to archeological studies, but early sections present a clear
overview of the resilience concept and the adaptive cycle.
Tainter, J. A. 1988. The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge
University Press, New York.
Tainter, J. A. 2006. Social complexity and sustainability. Ecological
Complexity 3:91-103.
Scheffer, M., F. Westley, W. A. Brock, and M. Holmgren. 2002. Dynamic
interaction of societies and ecosystems -- linking theories from ecology, economy,
and sociology. Pages 195-239 in L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, editors.
Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press,
Washington DC.
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Labels: Adaptive Cycle

24 APRIL 2013
Urban stream syndrome

Definition:
Urban stream syndrome describes the consistently observed ecological degradation of
streams draining urban land. Symptoms of the urban stream syndrome include a
flashier hydrograph, elevated concentrations of nutrients and contaminants, altered
channelmorphology, and reduced biotic richness, with increased dominance of
tolerant species.

Examples:
The most obvious hydrologic changes associated with urbanization are the
engineering of stream channels, in which natural features are replaced by concrete
channels and streambank stabilization efforts designed to resist increased flood
flows. Extensive piped storm drainage networks often completely bypass riparian
zones, channeling large amounts of water from impervious surfaces directly into
streams, both quickly and with increased frequency. A result of this altered
hydrology is that incision or downcutting is a common feature of urban stream
channels. Downcutting results from large volumes of water scouring out sediment
that has accumulated during agricultural activity and/or residential construction
in the watershed. Incision is especially marked in watersheds with old and/or
stable urban land use, where there are few sources of sediment to replace material
scoured by high flows. There is therefore tremendous variability in the condition
of urban streams, depending on historic patterns of development, redistribution of
sediments within streams, and hydrogeologic conditions in the watersheds. However,
we suggest that, over time, urban watersheds move towards stable land use, with
large amounts of impervious cover and low sediment production leading to stream
incision in most locations.

Why important:
Urban stream syndrome alter multiple aspects of stream ecosystem structure and
function; from biodiversity to nutrient retention.

For more information:

Groffman, P. M., D. J. Bain, L. E. Band, K. T. Belt, G. S. Brush, J. M.
Grove, R. V. Pouyat, I. C. Yesilonis, and W. C. Zipperer. 2003. Down by the
riverside: urban riparian ecology. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1:315-
321.
Kaushal, S. S. and K. T. Belt. 2012. The urban watershed continuum:
Evolving spatial and temporal dimensions. Urban Ecosystems 15:409435.
Walsh, C. J., A. H. Roy, J. W. Feminella, P. D. Cottingham, P. M.
Groffman, and R. P. Morgan. 2005. The urban stream syndrome: current knowledge and
the search for a cure. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 24:706-
723.

Contributed by BES Co-PI Dr. Peter Groffman

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CLICK BELOW TO VIEW TERMS
Adaptive Cycle
Adaptive Processes
Anthrome
Chicago School
Climatology
Continuum of Urbanity
Data Mining
Data Synthesis
Disturbance
Ecology
Ecosystem
Ecosystem Services
Gutter Subsidy
Human Ecosystem
Human Ecosystem Framework
Hydrological drought
Megaregion
Metacity
Metadata
Meteorological and Climatological Scales
Meteorology
Metropolis
Model
Neighborhood Association
Patch Dynamics
Process Equity
Resilience
Sanitary City
Sewershed
Suburb
Sustainability
Sustainable City
Upland Riparian Zone (URZ)
Urban
Urban Ecology
Urban Engineered Stream Continuum (UESC)
Urban Flash Index
Urban Forest
Urban grasslands
Urban Karst
Urban stream syndrome
Urban-Rural Continuum
Urban-rural Gradient
Urbanism
Watershed
Introduction to the BES Urban Lexicon
Who are we? The Baltimore Ecosystem Study is a community of researchers, scholars,
educators, and urban designers who are engaged in a Long-Term Ecological Research
(LTER) project funded by the National Science Foundation, the USDA Forest Service,
and other partners. We present this lexicon as our personal introduction to the
concepts we use in our research and community engagement. If you have suggestions
for additional terms for us to address, please contact the BES Project Facilitator,
Holly Beyar, at beyarh@caryinstitute.org
Who is this for? The definitions should be accessible to general readers, but the
expansions and recommended sources will be most useful to readers with some college
or graduate level training.
What is its scope? Like most dictionaries, we hope to introduce key terms briefly.
Not all terms that are important for urban socio-ecological research and education
will be covered here. We aim to summarize some of the most common ideas associated
with urban ecology. The authors include biological scientists, social scientists,
economists, urban designers, atmospheric scientists, hydrologists,
geomorphologists, and engineers. The references given with each entry are often our
own, and we use those to exemplify our approach to the ideas and as sources for
additional literature. We also include a key reference or two by others to open the
doors to additional sources. However, we do not attempt a comprehensive treatment.
Where to go for additional introductory information. There are few general sources
available for urban ecology at the moment. Summary volumes are beginning to appear,
and textbooks are in the works. For the time being, we suggest these general
sources. The first two are accessible to general readers, and the later ones are
more specialized.
Abrams, Charles. 1971. The language of cities: A glossary of terms. The Viking
Press, New York.

Gottdiener, M. and L. Budd. 2005. Key concepts in urban studies. Sage Publications,
London.

Marzluff, J.M., E. Shulenberger, W. Endlicher, M. Alberti, G. Bradley, C. Ryan, C.

ZumBrunnen, and U. Simon. 2008. Urban Ecology: International Perspective on the
Interaction Between Humans and Nature. Springer, New York.

ABOUT US
Baltimore Ecosystem Study
Baltimore Ecosystem Study
BLOG ARCHIVE
? 2013 (13)
? May (2)
Resilience
Adaptive Cycle
? April (5)
? March (4)
? January (2)
? 2012 (23)
? 2011 (6)
Idiom-based Lexical Studies

FINDING BRAND NEW IDIOMS IN THE DICTIONARY

1. dot the i's and cross the t's to pay a great

deal of attention to the
details of something, especially when you are trying to complete a task
I still have to dot the i's and cross the t's my Idioms paper before I
submit to Mr. Alim.

2. like two peas in a pod very similar,

especially in appearance
My aunt has twin daughters who are like two peas in a pod.

3. be in the same boat to be in the

same unpleasant situation
as other people

My friends were always complaining that they couldnt go back to the

valley of amazone to meet with their mom and dad for the pendekar make up classes
in two weeks ago, but we're all in the same boat.

4. give sb the cold shoulder to be

intentionally unfriendly to
someone and give them no attention

I always tried to be pleasant to my boyfriend but he always gave me the

cold shoulder. Consequently, I said good bye to him and went to Gunung Pati for
learning English with the pendekar.

5. make your blood run cold A sound, sight or

thought that makes
your blood run cold frightens you very much.
Last night, when I was typing Idioms paper on my bed, I heard my friend
in the next door laughed alone like Suzana which made my blood run cold.

6. land of milk and honey a country where living

conditions are
good and people have the opportunity to make a lot of money

Many people in the world regard Indonesia as a land of milk and honey.
That is why I love my country so much.

7. be as good as your word to do everything

that you promise
someone you will

My boyfriend said that he will buy a big pink beautiful doll and he was
as good as his word.

8. the time of your life an extremely

enjoyable experience
I had the time of my life when I joined in pendekars class because there
werent boring things.

9. have your cake and eat it to have or do two

good things at the
same time that are impossible to have or do at the same time

I said to my roommate, You can't have your cake and eat it. If you want
to hang out with your boyfriend tonight, you can't finish your Idioms paper. You
have to remember that it will submit tomorrow morning.

10. open your mouth to speak or start to

speak
My roommate is veri talkative. She always said, Lily, please open your
mouth and dont be silent. On the other hand, I never do it because I know that
she surely discusses about unimportant things.

11. throw the book at sb to

severely punish someone
My brother told me that today his English teacher threw the book at him
for he forgot doing his homework by asking him to clean a school toilet.

12. once in a blue moon not very often

Since I studied in Semarang State University, my boyfriend only see me
once in a blue moon.

13. no sooner said than done used to say that you

will do something
immediately
My mother always remain me to clean the house and it makes me cannot
enjoy my meals. I tell her that no sooner said than done.

14. give sb the jitters to make someone

nervous or
frightened
Please, dont look me with angrily. You're giving me the jitters! Tell me
what my mistakes.

15. let the cat out of the bag to allow a secret to

be known, usually
without intending to
I always look up to my roommate and keep her secret, but she have made me
to be disappointed. She always lets the cat out of the bag to many people in this
boarding house about my life.

*******@@@*******
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