Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecological system to absorb disturbances, reorganize, and retain its essential structure, functions, feedbacks, and identity within a particular stability domain. It reflects the system’s ability to maintain key processes such as nutrient cycling, energy flow, and species interactions despite perturbations, including climatic extremes, biological invasions, or anthropogenic impacts. Resilience arises from mechanisms like functional redundancy, response diversity, spatial and temporal heterogeneity, and connectivity among habitat patches. In research, it is quantified through metrics such as recovery rates, persistence of functional groups, thresholds for regime shifts, and the magnitude of disturbance a system can withstand before transitioning to an alternative stable state.
Severe droughts, intense floods, and heat waves are pushing river ecosystems beyond their natural limits of resilience. A review of data on river systems across several continents published in the journal Nature Reviews Biodiversity ...
Ecology
May 20, 2026
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Over the past decade, cities around the world have increasingly turned to nature-based infrastructure to become more resilient in the face of a changing climate. Urban forests provide shade during heat waves and improve air ...
Evolution
May 15, 2026
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A recent Minnesota Pollution Control Agency report found that climate change could cost Minnesotans more than $20 billion a year by 2040. This is just the local cost of a global problem. Ecosystem stability is essential to ...
Ecology
May 14, 2026
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An international research team led by National Taiwan University has developed a new analytical framework based on Empirical Dynamic Modeling. This framework can quantify how response diversity varies over time using time-series ...
Ecology
May 13, 2026
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Restoring dry forests in the Pacific Northwest, shaped by frequent low-intensity fire and widely spaced trees, often means thinning dense stands that accumulated after decades of fire suppression. This can make forests healthier ...
Ecology
May 12, 2026
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Around two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest could shift into degraded forest or savanna-like ecosystems at 1.5–1.9°C of global warming if deforestation increases to roughly 22–28% of the Amazon, according to a new study from ...
Earth Sciences
May 6, 2026
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Tropical forests are among the world's most important carbon sinks. A new study by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University of Vienna, and Brazil's National Institute for Amazonian Research suggests that even ...
Environment
Apr 28, 2026
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A host of positive "tipping points" can spark rapid nature recovery, a leading expert says. Action to protect and restore nature must accelerate radically to meet global goals for 2030 and beyond. Writing in the journal Nature ...
Environment
Apr 27, 2026
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Around the world, people plan to plant more than 1 trillion trees this decade in an ambitious effort to slow climate change and reduce biodiversity loss. But if the past is prolonged, many of those planted trees won't survive. ...
Ecology
Apr 25, 2026
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New research from the UBC-based Mother Tree Project is shedding light on how forests respond to harvesting and climate stress, including practices aimed at reducing wildfire risk. The work is published in the Canadian Journal ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 14, 2026
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