Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.¶
Holling, C. S. (1973). Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4, 1-23.
Cited by¶
15 citations across 15 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Adaptive Capacity
- The Holling adaptive cycle and its capacity dynamics
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
- The Holling adaptive cycle and its capacity dynamics
- Attractor Selection and Basin Control
- Restoration efforts must overcome the basin structure: simply removing the initial disturbance may not restore the original state if the basin boundary has shifted, a property Holling (1973) formalized in his foundational analysis of resilience and stability in ecological systems.
This sourceDefines resilience as capacity to absorb perturbations and persist within a regime; distinguishes resilience from stability/resistance and underlies why removing a disturbance need not restore the original state if the basin has shifted. SUPPORTS marker 056.
SupportedVerified against the work's full text
Holling defines domains of attraction and their boundaries and documents fisheries and grasslands that did not return when the disturbance was removed.
“moves the system from one domain of attraction to another. Return to the orig~nal domain can o~lly be nladc by an explicit reduction of the trees and shrubs.”
- Restoration efforts must overcome the basin structure: simply removing the initial disturbance may not restore the original state if the basin boundary has shifted, a property Holling (1973) formalized in his foundational analysis of resilience and stability in ecological systems.
- Balance
- The failure mode of imbalance is predictable: over-concentration in high-return assets (dominance failure), over-diversification into low-conviction positions (excessive averaging), or failure to adjust as conditions change (static-bias failure).
This sourceDistinguishes resilience (capacity to absorb disturbance and persist) from stability, noting over-optimized stability can reduce resilience. Cited inline in tension T2 ('In systems thinking, Holling 1973 on resilience …'), which it supports
- The failure mode of imbalance is predictable: over-concentration in high-return assets (dominance failure), over-diversification into low-conviction positions (excessive averaging), or failure to adjust as conditions change (static-bias failure).
- Environmental Coupling Strength
- Migratory species effectively reduce seasonal environmental coupling by moving; sessile plants exhibit high environmental coupling to light, water, and soil conditions.
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and persist; distinguishes resilience from resistance. SUPPORTS marker 189 (organism-environment interaction framed as central to ecological resilience and adaptive capacity).
- Migratory species effectively reduce seasonal environmental coupling by moving; sessile plants exhibit high environmental coupling to light, water, and soil conditions.
- Equilibrium
- . Biology and ecology Homeostasis as a controlled equilibrium of physiological variables (body temperature, blood pH, blood glucose). Predator-prey equilibria in population dynamics. Multiple stable equilibria and ecological resilience
This sourceIntroduces ecological resilience as the magnitude of disturbance a system absorbs before flipping to an alternative stable state (e.g., clear- vs. turbid-water lakes); distinguishes resilience (basin/persistence) from local stability.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling documents lakes, fisheries and grazed vegetation shifting between distinct domains of attraction, and defines resilience in those terms.
“These examples point to one or more distinct domains of attraction”
- . Biology and ecology Homeostasis as a controlled equilibrium of physiological variables (body temperature, blood pH, blood glucose). Predator-prey equilibria in population dynamics. Multiple stable equilibria and ecological resilience
- Homeostasis
- cybernetics and engineering (Ashby's (1952) Design for a Brain and the homeostat; thermostats, autopilots, cruise control, power-grid frequency regulation, process control across chemical plants; PID controllers are the workhorse homeostatic mechanism),
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
- cybernetics and engineering (Ashby's (1952) Design for a Brain and the homeostat; thermostats, autopilots, cruise control, power-grid frequency regulation, process control across chemical plants; PID controllers are the workhorse homeostatic mechanism),
- Perturbation
- .
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling discusses May's complexity-stability analysis and thresholds between domains of attraction, but not a link between resilience and network structure.
“domly assembled complex systems are in general less stable, and never more stable, than less complex ones.”
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- Regime Change
- Once shifted, the system exhibits new dominant dynamics, new equilibria, and new constraints that were absent in the previous regime, an idea Holling (1973) introduced through his analysis of resilience and stability in ecological systems.
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling's analysis of resilience supports systems moving between distinct domains of attraction and not returning on their own; new dynamics and constraints are not spelled out.
“examples again suggest distinct domains of attraction in which the populations forced close to the boundary of the domain can then flip over it.”
- Once shifted, the system exhibits new dominant dynamics, new equilibria, and new constraints that were absent in the previous regime, an idea Holling (1973) introduced through his analysis of resilience and stability in ecological systems.
- Requisite Variety
- ecology (biodiversity enables ecosystem response to perturbations; low-diversity ecosystems collapse under novel stressors)
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling reports the Elton/MacArthur view that varied trophic links keep flows going when a species becomes rare, but presents it as a contested view and does not say low-diversity ecosystems collapse under novel stressors.
“if there are a variety of trophic links the same flow of energy and nutrients will be ... alternate links when a species becomes rare”
- ecology (biodiversity enables ecosystem response to perturbations; low-diversity ecosystems collapse under novel stressors)
- Resilience
- Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances and continue functioning — either by returning to its prior state (engineering sense), by remaining within its current regime under a range of perturbations (ecological sense), or by reorganizing and adapting to maintain essential function under change (adaptive sense), as Holling (1973) first formalized for ecosystem dynamics
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling defines resilience as persistence of a system's relationships under change; return to equilibrium he names stability, and no adaptive sense appears.
“But there is another property, termed resilience, that is a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and”
- Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances and continue functioning — either by returning to its prior state (engineering sense), by remaining within its current regime under a range of perturbations (ecological sense), or by reorganizing and adapting to maintain essential function under change (adaptive sense), as Holling (1973) first formalized for ecosystem dynamics
- Robustness
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
- Self-Organized Criticality
- Ecosystems exhibit self-organized criticality through predator-prey dynamics, resource fluctuations, and environmental variability, a fluctuation-stability coupling Holling (1973) characterized in his foundational separation of resilience from static stability in ecological systems.
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling does separate resilience from stability and discusses predator-prey fluctuation, but never describes ecosystems as self-organized critical.
“With these definitions in mind a system can be very resilient and still fluctuate greatly, i.e. have low stability.”
- Ecosystems exhibit self-organized criticality through predator-prey dynamics, resource fluctuations, and environmental variability, a fluctuation-stability coupling Holling (1973) characterized in his foundational separation of resilience from static stability in ecological systems.
- Stability
- Ecosystem ecology: a system's return to a characteristic species composition after disturbance; Holling's engineering resilience is essentially return rate after perturbation.
This sourceDistinguishes engineering resilience (return rate) from ecological resilience (basin size) for ecosystems returning to species composition.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling defines return-to-equilibrium speed after disturbance (his 'stability') but does not use the term 'engineering resilience' or speak of species composition.
“stability, which represents the ability of a system to return to an equilibrium state after a temporary disturbance; the more rapidly it returns and the less it fluctuates, the more stable it would be.”
- Ecosystem ecology: a system's return to a characteristic species composition after disturbance; Holling's engineering resilience is essentially return rate after perturbation.
- Tipping Points (or Phase Transitions)
- The basin of attraction around each state determines resilience
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
- The basin of attraction around each state determines resilience
- Ultra-Stability (Ashby's Concept)
- In ecology, ultra-stability is ecosystem resilience: the capacity to maintain ecosystem function (energy flow, nutrient cycling) despite species loss, environmental changes, or novel stressors, through structural and functional redundancy
This sourceDefines resilience as a system's capacity to absorb perturbations and return to its original state or regime; distinguishes resilience (recovery rate) from resistance (response magnitude); foundational for understanding ecosystem responses to disturbance.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
Holling defines resilience as the ability to absorb change and still persist, supporting the resilience framing; "ultra-stability", ecosystem-function wording and redundancy are not Holling's claims.
“another property, termed resilience, that is a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change”
- In ecology, ultra-stability is ecosystem resilience: the capacity to maintain ecosystem function (energy flow, nutrient cycling) despite species loss, environmental changes, or novel stressors, through structural and functional redundancy
Verification¶
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Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 9 of 15 citations: 1 supported, 8 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
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