The 2008 Joint Meeting of the Society for Range Management and the America Forage and Grassland Council. |
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 9:40 AM
Variation in Ecological Resilience: A Fundamental Concept for Rangeland Ecology
Brandon T. Bestelmeyer1, David D. Briske2, Joel Brown3, Kris M. Havstad1, and Rhonda K. Skaggs4. (1) USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, MSC 3JER Box 30003, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, (2) Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, Texas A&M University, 2138 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, (3) USDA NRCS, Jornada Experimental Range, MSC, 3JER PO Box 30003, Las Cruces, NM 88003, (4) Agricultural Economics, New Mexico State University, Box 30003, MSC 3169, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003
The concepts and terminology associated with ecological resilience are fast becoming a common language for the study of global change. We review the application of the broad concept of resilience to rangeland ecology, connecting it to several well-established rangeland concepts including equilibrial/nonequilibrial rangeland systems, ecological sites, succession, and state-and-transition models. We argue that resilience concepts have the potential to provide a holistic framework for rangeland ecology that links advances across disciplines including pedology, plant ecology, landscape ecology, rural sociology, and economics, and we illustrate this linkage. In order to realize this potential, however, we will need to move beyond vague metaphors to produce real-world examples and then general strategies that practitioners and scientists find worthwhile to emulate.