Resilience Alliance

Save the date: the Society for Social-Ecological Systems is launching on March 27, 2025, at 3:30pm Central African Time. Register for the online launch event now.

Save the date! Celebrate the launch of SocSES with us – and learn more about our plans for building a home for SES research with you.

📅 Date: Thursday, 27 March 2025
⏰ Time: 15:30 – 17:00 Central African Time
📍 Location: Online (Zoom)

Register for the online launch event: lnkd.in/dDCR33DN

Making room for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge in global assessments: our experiences in the values assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity ... In recognizing the urgent need to address global challenges such as biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and climate change, it is essential to incorporate diverse knowledge systems, including Indigeno...

Making room for meaningful inclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge in global assessments: our experiences in the values assessment of IPBES
Huambachano et al
doi.org/10.5751/ES-1...

reflections from Indigenous scholars and ILK experts from the Global South

🚨 We're hiring! 🚨

We’re looking for two research assistants to join our team! If you're interested in contributing to research on making Swedish and global food systems more sustainable, resilient, and healthy, make sure to apply by 16 February! 🌱🍽️

Learn more: https://buff.ly/2Lu3mgn

Fig. 4: Conceptual figure illustrates the impacts of fire exclusion and suppression on area burned and fire severity in historically frequent-fire North American forests and woodlands represented by the majority of the fire scar sites used in our analysis.

current fire impacts amplified by
"the growing fire deficit that has removed the self-regulating behaviors and stabilizing feedbacks of historical fire regimes"

A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned
Parks+
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Hypothetical examples that illustrate how a regional SOS for resilience can be applied to a landscape to understand if cumulative effects are exceeding thresholds beyond which there may be significant changes to ecosystem structure, function, and process (i.e., ecological resilience). The regional SOS for resilience is shown with light shading outlined by an upper and lower boundary (hashed lines). The current position of the system within the regional SOS for resilience is represented by a dark red (outside regional SOS For resilience) or green (within the regional SOS for resilience) band. The width of the band captures the uncertainty or fluctuations in the precise state of the system. When an attribute has been pushed outside of the regional SOS for resilience, it is outlined in red. Top panel – a landscape where a century of anthropogenic wildfire suppression has resulted in highly connected landscapes that lack modularity and feedbacks (e.g., wildfire disturbance regimes). Although diversity and memory remain within their regional SOS for resilience, they are approaching the lower boundary. Middle panel – a landscape that has been fragmented by seismic exploration to support the oil and gas industry, thereby resulting in high modularity and decreased connectivity. Lower panel – a landscape with extensive timber harvest, which has pushed most attributes of a resilient ecosystem outside of their regional SOS. A patchwork of fragmented stands in various states of recovery has resulted in high patch diversity (e.g., age class), high modularity, and low connectivity. Additionally, silviculture practices have led to a decline in ecological memory and disrupted natural feedbacks (e.g., disturbance-recovery feedback). Figured produced in Biorender; imagery from Google Earth

Resilience & Environmental Assessment

Setting the Limit for Cumulative Effects: a Regional Safe Operating Space for Maintaining Ecological Resilience
Greaves+
doi.org/10.1007/s002...
&
Re-grounding cumulative effects assessments in ecological resilience
Greaves+
doi.org/10.1016/j.ei...

Important new paper on ecological function, broad-scale disturbances, and likely loss of ecological #resilience. Still thinking about what this means for resilience theory.

Reflexivity as a transformative capacity for sustainability science. ✨ Excited to share a recently published paper with a stellar group of transdisciplinary co-authors. Really proud of this one, as I was able to share an important personal learning during my PhD www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

google ngram viewer

The is thinking more about surprise, resilience, and optimization

#Anthropocene

Fig. 3. (a) Use of the terms “social-ecological systems,” “social ecological systems,” “socio-ecological systems,” and “socio ecological systems” over the years 1981–2019. The insert shows the period between 1981–2003. Source: Based on data extracted in the WoS database. (b) A cumulative stack graph showing the development of SES research across continents, covering the years 1981–2019. The number of publications for each region corresponds to the proportion it covers in the graph (by color).

The evolution of social-ecological systems (SES) research: a co-authorship and co-citation network analysis
Manyani et al
doi.org/10.5751/ES-1...

An interesting new take on the debate around top-down vs bottom-up formation of institutions.

Many people from the Resilience Alliance were involved in producing these new assessments. Congratulations on all your hard work.

The summaries for policy makers from these assessments are out now:
ipbes.canto.de/v/IPBES11Med...

The future of the biosphere Explore studies, find resources and contribute your own study to the database.

Biosphere Futures 2.0
www.biospherefutures.net

is our online database of #socialEcologicalScenarios case studies

the database has >100 cases that have been contributed scenario practitioners from around the world

for more info see paper
doi.org/10.5751/ES-1...

we welcome more contributions

Note: A scientifically solid & practically useful literature on "tipping points" in local nature-society systems has been available since at least the early 1960s: Ricker (1963) "Big Effects from Small Causes" in fisheries management, Holling (1973) "Resilience & stability of ecological systems."

Building resilience now available in Korean!!

Fig. 2. Mean scores for indicators based on perceived resilience pre- and post-wildfire. Values are as follows: Very Poor (1), Somewhat Poor (2), Neutral (3), Somewhat Good (4), and Very Good (5).

Perceived changes in social-ecological resilience in fire-prone ecosystems in Colorado
Cheney et al
doi.org/10.5751/ES-1...

"wildfire events can have negative and positive effects on components of SES resilience"

Fig. 1. Comparison of number of codes reflecting common and less common cultural dimension codes identified in Ka ʻOihana Lawaiʻa for (a) taxa emphasized in Hawaiian texts, (b) taxa emphasized in both Hawaiian texts and NOAA management documents, and (c) taxa emphasized in NOAA management documents. Asterisk indicates a significant difference (chi-squared test, p < 0.05).

Relational research to elevate cultural dimensions of marine organisms in Hawaiʻi
Leong et al
doi.org/10.5751/ES-1...