The capacity of a system - an ecosystem or a social-ecological system - to tolerate disturbance, without collapsing into a qualitatively different state controlled by a different set of processes, is known as resilience. A resilient system:
*can absorb considerable change and still retain the same controls on function and structure
*is capable of a high degree of self-organisation
*has the ability to build and increase its capacity for learning and adaptation
Written by some of the leading international thinkers in the field, Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems provides a state-of-the-science account of resilience theory, based on comparisons of a set of case studies around the world, and gives some fascinating insights into the subject.