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.
Desertification is accelerating under climate change, threatening biodiversity, food security, and human well-being across the Mediterranean Basin, southern Europe, and the Middle East. Water scarcity and land degradation ...
Ecology
Jan 31, 2026
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42
A critique from a team led by Utah State University ecologist Dan MacNulty and published in Forest Ecology and Management has prompted a formal correction to a high-profile study on aspen recovery while raising broader questions ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 22, 2026
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22
Researchers find that diversifying crops and integrating livestock improves farm efficiencies and ecosystem services in the US Midwest. The work is published in PNAS Nexus.
Agriculture
Dec 23, 2025
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19
The low-latitude highlands region of southwestern China experienced two major climate events in recent years: a severe drought in 2009–2010 and an extreme heat wave in 2019. Though both sprang from similar large-scale atmospheric ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 22, 2025
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24
Wildfires may disappear from the landscape within weeks, but their hidden effects on the soil can persist for decades. An international research team led by the University of Göttingen, together with partners in Tübingen, ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 19, 2025
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51
Life has a way of bouncing back, even after catastrophic events like forest fires or volcanic eruptions. While nature's resilience to natural disasters has long been recognized, not much is known about how organisms colonize ...
Astrobiology
Dec 18, 2025
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89
The idea began in California's Sierra Nevada, a towering spine of rock and ice where rising temperatures and the decline of snowpack are transforming ecosystems, sometimes with catastrophic consequences for wildlife.
Environment
Dec 17, 2025
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14
In the aftermath of historically severe wildfires in 2020, a study of Cascade Range watersheds found that stream vertebrates are doing surprisingly well, highlighted by flourishing fish populations.
Plants & Animals
Dec 16, 2025
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19
Spillovers from protected areas such as national parks and wildlife reserves can play a significant role in boosting biodiversity beyond their boundaries with potential benefits to people through ecosystem services such as ...
Ecology
Dec 11, 2025
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14
Coral reefs may seem like paradise, but they are being degraded by a range of global and local factors, including climate change, poor water quality, and overfishing. New research reveals that connections between reefs help ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 9, 2025
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50
