---
title: what makes a living system resilient
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-makes-a-living-system-resilient
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-makes-a-living-system-resilient.md
subtitle: "many kinds doing the same job differently, spare capacity, connection, and the slow things nobody watches"
category: natural-capital
---

# what makes a living system resilient

*many kinds doing the same job differently, spare capacity, connection, and the slow things nobody watches*

**Ecosystem resilience** is, in the words of Walker, Holling and colleagues (2004), "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks." It is a measure of persistence, the sense Holling brought to ecology in 1973, not of how quickly a system returns.

If you keep ground, your own or someone else's, the question is practical: what lets it come through a drought, fire or flood as the same kind of place, and what is wearing that down?

The wetland holds the high water, the grasses hold the soil, and the bees and flies set the fruit, whether or not anyone pays. [**Ensurance**](/manual/ensurance?from=guide) is how the people who depend on that work can pay for its keeping. It is not the wetland, and it does not stop a drought.

## seven principles, two kinds of work

A 2012 review by Biggs, Schlüter and colleagues proposed seven principles for resilient ecosystem services. The Stockholm Resilience Centre summarized them in 2015, with examples, drawing on the authors' later book. They apply to social-ecological systems, where people and ecosystems are one system.

| principle | where it shows |
|---|---|
| Maintain diversity and redundancy | Ground |
| Manage connectivity | Ground |
| Manage slow variables and feedbacks | Ground |
| Foster complex adaptive systems thinking | People |
| Encourage learning and experimentation | People |
| Broaden participation | People |
| Promote polycentric governance | People |

The split is ours, and rough: the authors say the principles "often co-occur and are highly interdependent."

## many kinds doing the same job

The centre's first principle: "Systems with many different components, be they species, actors or sources of knowledge, are generally more resilient than systems with few components." Redundancy, it says, provides "insurance." Its example, about people: in Kenya, Tanzania, the Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar, coastal fishers from households with more diverse livelihoods are more likely to leave fishing when catches decline.

On the ground, Leslie and McCabe (2013) explain that several species may perform one function, such as pollination, seed dispersal or short-grass grazing. That is **functional redundancy**. Such species "may contribute to the same process within an ecosystem but respond differently to changing circumstances." That range of responses is **response diversity**, a usage they trace to Elmqvist and colleagues (2003).

Our own reading, not theirs: look for several kinds doing each job that do not all suffer in the same bad year. The spare parts are alive. Given ground in fit condition, they can seed and move back in, unless the place has already flipped.

## connection cuts both ways

"Connectivity can be both a good and a bad thing," the centre writes. "Well-connected systems can recover from disturbances more quickly, but overly connected systems may lead to rapid spread of disturbances." For the other edge, Holling's 1973 paper uses the sea lamprey, which came in by the Welland Canal, among its Great Lakes examples.

So manage connection; do not maximize it. Holling's advice was to "emphasize heterogeneity." Across five large western US wildfires, Fairfax and Whittle (2020) found "beaver-dammed riparian corridors are relatively unaffected by wildfire" compared with similar corridors without dams: the drop in greenness during fire averaged 3.05 times as large without beaver. But "plant greenness rebounded in the year after wildfire regardless of beaver activity," and they measured greenness, not whether fire stopped. Our note, not the study's: beaver can also cost a rancher water on hay ground and plugged culverts and headgates. A corridor that holds up more than its own acres is a [keystone parcel](/guide/what-is-a-keystone-parcel?from=guide).

Fire is not only a threat. Our note: in fire-adapted grassland, continuous grass is also forage and fire belongs to the system; Kruger National Park, the centre notes, lets fire frequency vary between set bounds instead of fixing it.

## the slow things nobody watches

A **slow variable** is a condition that changes over years, like soil organic matter or groundwater. Walker and colleagues (2012) describe how, as a slow variable nears a threshold, the fast ones you see each season "fluctuate more in response to environmental and other shocks." Their example: soil organic matter shapes how crop production responds to rainfall. NRCS publishes a per-acre water figure for organic matter; a meta-analysis by Minasny and McBratney found the effect "very small," so we give no number.

**Feedbacks** are loops in which a change comes back to damp itself or to amplify itself. A resilient system keeps its damping loops working. The centre's example of an amplifying loop is introduced grasses in Hawaii: "More grass leads to more fire which, in turn, leads to more grass." A loop like that can hold a place in a state nobody wanted, the flip covered in [bounce back to what?](/guide/bounce-back-to-what?from=guide)

One early sign: in an experiment on a living system, Veraart and colleagues (2012) found that "recovery from small perturbations becomes slower as the system comes closer to the critical point." It cannot time a flip. The authors suggest that indicators of slowing down "may be used to rank complex systems on a broad scale from resilient to fragile."

## the people in it

People are part of the system. Four principles are about how they decide and learn.

- **Systems thinking.** Expect connections at several levels, accept uncertainty, hear more than one view. The centre's example is Kruger, with the caveat that evidence this directly raises resilience is limited.
- **Learning.** The centre's example is Kristianstad Vattenrike in Sweden, a degraded wetland now "a highly valued area that has become a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve."
- **Participation.** Public participation on threats to the Great Barrier Reef "was able to raise public support for improved conservation plans."
- **More than one center of decision.** Several bodies making rules for the same place. The centre names the costs: tension, and "scale-shopping" for a friendlier venue.

Our note, not the centre's: where a tribal nation has authority over, or rights in, a place, it is a government with its own law and long knowledge of that place, not one stakeholder among many.

The centre also warns that simply making existing ecosystem services more resilient "can entrench and exacerbate inequalities," and that "it is not possible to enhance the resilience of all ecosystem services simultaneously." Resilience for whom, and of what, is a choice someone makes.

## efficiency is a trade, not a mistake

Holling (1996) contrasted "maintaining efficiency of function" and "maintaining existence of function." He warned that "fixed rules for achieving constant yields" lead to systems that "gradually lose resilience and suddenly break down in the face of disturbances that previously could be absorbed."

Two examples of our own: a field of one variety, and a straightened channel that moves water off fast, which is its job. Neither is a mistake. What they give up is slack, and slack costs money in a good year: a buffer strip not cropped, a second water source to keep up, a stocking rate below what a wet year would carry. The owner pays first and benefits mostly in a bad year, so choose the trade with open eyes. The same shape shows up in [a book of funders that does not lean on one source](/guide/no-single-funder-no-single-supplier?from=guide).

## what to look for on your own ground

For the slow rows, a soil test, water-level readings and photos from fixed points are enough to start; your conservation district or extension office knows what records exist.

| question | a good sign | a warning |
|---|---|---|
| Who does each job here? | Several grasses hold the slope; several insects pollinate | One species or one variety carries a whole job |
| Do they suffer in the same year? | Some do best in wet years, others in dry | Everything stresses in the same week of heat |
| Where is water held? | In more than one place: soil, a tank or pond, a spring or wetland if any | One source, and bare ground between |
| What connects to what? | Cover and corridors that let animals and seed move between patches | Isolated patches, or a ditch that carries silt straight off the place |
| Where would a fire run? | Breaks and patches; in fire-adapted country, fire at the frequency the ground can take | In country that does not burn naturally, dry fuel from fence line to fence line |
| What is changing slowly? | Organic matter (soil test) and groundwater (water-level readings) recorded and holding | A slow trend nobody measures |
| Which loops push back, and which run away? | A loop that pushes back when things slip is still working, and you can name it | A loop like grass and fire in Hawaii, each turn making the next easier |
| Is recovery from ordinary knocks slowing? | Fixed-point photos, or the memory of someone who has watched that ground for decades, show the same spots greening up after a dry spell as they used to | A run of slower green-ups. Weather, season and grazing also change it: a reason to ask, not a measurement |
| Who keeps the knowledge, and who decides? | Knowledge passed on, written, spoken or shown; owner, neighbors, district, tribal nations and agencies each act within their own authority | Knowledge that is not being passed on, in any form; one office decides alone |

No row is a score. A place can pass every row and still meet a fire or flood bigger than any buffer, and Scheffer and colleagues (2009) call predicting thresholds "extremely difficult."

:::johnson
**look for many kinds doing one job, and the slow numbers nobody writes down.** They are two of the seven places to start.

[read next: the resilience a place already has is alive →](/guide/the-resilience-a-place-already-has-is-alive?from=guide)
:::

## where ensurance fits

**Ensurance** lets the people who depend on that ground pay for its keeping every year: an account for the place, certificates for the named ground, proceeds to the people doing the keeping. [The stocks and flows of natural capital](/guide/the-stocks-and-flows-of-natural-capital?from=guide) explains the counting. [See the living systems the protocol counts](/natural-capital?from=guide), or [see how this applies to land stewards](/solutions/land-stewards?from=guide&topic=resilience).

## frequently asked questions

### what is ecosystem resilience?

Adapting Walker et al. (2004), ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance and reorganize while keeping essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks. It is about the size of disturbance a system can absorb before its structure changes, not the speed of its return.

### what makes an ecosystem resilient?

Several species doing each job and responding differently to change, connection managed for both its edges, damping feedbacks kept working, and slow variables such as soil organic matter kept with room to spare, because the edge is hard to see in advance. The people in the system matter too: learning, participation and more than one center of decision.

### is a more diverse ecosystem always more resilient?

Not always. The Stockholm Resilience Centre's word is "generally." The sources used here do not say when diversity fails to help.

## sources

[Stockholm Resilience Centre, "Applying resilience thinking," February 19, 2015](https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2015-02-19-applying-resilience-thinking.html) — Summary of the seven principles, based on Biggs, Schlüter and Schoon (eds.), *Principles for Building Resilience* (2015), with examples: diversity and "insurance," the coastal fishers, connectivity both good and bad, the Hawaii grass-fire loop, Kruger, Kristianstad Vattenrike, the Great Barrier Reef, polycentric governance and its tensions, and the equity caveat

[Biggs, Schlüter et al. (2012), "Toward Principles for Enhancing the Resilience of Ecosystem Services," Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37](https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-051211-123836) — The review that proposed the seven principles; "the principles often co-occur and are highly interdependent"

[Walker, Holling, Carpenter and Kinzig (2004), "Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems," Ecology and Society 9(2)](https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/) — The definition of resilience used here

[Holling (1973), "Resilience and stability of ecological systems," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4 (IIASA reprint)](https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/26/1/RP-73-003.pdf) — Resilience as persistence; the sea lamprey and the Welland Canal among the Great Lakes examples; "emphasize heterogeneity"

[Holling (1996), "Engineering Resilience versus Ecological Resilience," National Academy of Engineering](https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/4919/chapter/4) — Efficiency of function versus existence of function; fixed rules for constant yields lead to systems that lose resilience

[Leslie and McCabe (2013), "Response Diversity and Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems," Current Anthropology 54(2)](https://www.colorado.edu/anthropology/sites/default/files/attached-files/responsediversityandresilience.pdf) — Functional redundancy defined; response diversity as restated from Elmqvist et al. (2003)

[Walker, Carpenter, Rockström, Crépin and Peterson (2012), "Drivers, 'slow' variables, 'fast' variables, shocks, and resilience," Ecology and Society 17(3)](https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss3/art30/) — Slow and fast variables; soil organic matter and crop response to rainfall

[Fairfax and Whittle (2020), "Smokey the Beaver," Ecological Applications 30(8)](https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2225) — Beaver-dammed corridors in five western US wildfires; 3.05 times the greenness drop without beaver; greenness rebounded the next year regardless of beaver

[Veraart et al. (2012), "Recovery rates reflect distance to a tipping point in a living system," Nature 481](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10723) — Recovery from small perturbations slows near a tipping point; timing cannot be predicted

[Scheffer et al. (2009), "Early-warning signals for critical transitions," Nature 461](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08227) — Predicting critical points before they are reached is "extremely difficult"

[USDA NRCS, "Irrigation and Water Management"](https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/getting-assistance/other-topics/organic/nrcs-assistance-for-organic-farmers/irrigation-and-water-management) — The per-acre water figure NRCS gives for soil organic matter, named here but not used because it is disputed

[Minasny and McBratney (2018), "Limited effect of organic matter on soil available water capacity," European Journal of Soil Science 69](https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.12475) — The effect of organic matter on available water is "very small"; why this post gives no per-acre figure

## the series

1. [resilience means to leap back](/guide/resilience-means-to-leap-back?from=guide) — **Read first:** The word's root, its travels, and the question that changed in 1973
2. [bounce back to what?](/guide/bounce-back-to-what?from=guide) — A beam returns to its shape; a lake or a reef pushed too far becomes something else
3. [what makes a living system resilient](/guide/what-makes-a-living-system-resilient?from=guide) — Many kinds doing one job, spare capacity, connection and the slow things nobody watches
4. [the resilience a place already has is alive](/guide/the-resilience-a-place-already-has-is-alive?from=guide) — The floodplain, the marsh, the canopy and the soil as infrastructure
5. [how to build resilience for a place](/guide/how-to-build-resilience-for-a-place?from=guide) — Six steps, starting with the living systems a place already stands on
6. [no place is resilient alone](/guide/no-place-is-resilient-alone?from=guide) — Why the unit that works is the region, and every place in it