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Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 2201 – 2206

2011 3rd International Conference on Environmental

Science and Information Application
Conference TitleTechnology (ESIAT 2011)

Resilience of Forest Ecosystems and its Influencing Factors

Haiming Yana, Jinyan Zhan*b, Tao Zhangc
State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875,
China
a
AnYanyan588@126.com

Abstract

Ecosystem resilience as a key target of the sustainable development of forest resource. Diagnosis of ecosytem
resilience is an important premise for maintaining the sustainable development of the ecosytem and socio-economic
system. But researches on ecosytem resilience still lingered on its definition and case studies, there have been only
few researches on its quantitative measurement so far. It is a hopeful method to quantitatively measure forest
ecosytem resilience with its influencing factors, but there has been fewer researches. this paper has first reviewed the
development of the definition of ecosystem resilience and discussed its current measurement methods. Next, the
recorded influencing factors of ecosystem resilience were illustrated and finally the further research directions were
discussed.
© 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Conference ESIAT2011
© 2011 Published
Organization by Elsevier
Committee. Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Key words: Ecosystem resilience, forest ecosytem, surrogate, influencing factor

1. Introduction

The second IHDP Update proposed resilience coud contribute to sustainable development of the socio-
ecological system and considered ecosystem resilience as a key target of sustainable development of
forest resource[1]. The forest ecosystem is the main terreistrial biodiveristy bank and biological carbon
pool, it plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity, alleviating climate change and providing
ecosystem services. Under variable conditions, ecosystem resilience is of great significance to maintaining
the desirable forest ecosystem state so as to provide important ecosystem services[2]; Diagnosis of forest

Foundation: The National Natural Science Foundation of China: 40801231, 41071343; National Basic Research Program of China (973
Program): 2010CB950904
Corresponding author: Zhan Jinyan (1974-), Ph.D, specialized in ecosystem assessment and environmental informatics. E-mail:
AnYanyan588@126.com

1878-0296 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Conference ESIAT2011 Organization Committee.
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2011.09.345
2202 Haiming Yan et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 2201 – 2206

ecosytem resilience is an important premise for maintaining sustainable development of the ecosytem and
socio-economic system[1].
The value of ecosytem resilience in forest ecoystem mangement has been widely accepted, but related
researches still linger on the debate on its definition, reaching no concensus on its scientific definition.
There have been few methods that can make the definition operational[3] and few researches on
quantitative measurement of ecosystem resilience.Diagnosis of ecosystem resilience provides an approach
to understand the human and natural system as a complex and adaptive system[4, 5]; but there has been
limited knowledge on influencing factors of ecosystem resilience, operational indicators of resilience have
received little attention in the literature[6], there is no consensus on the indicator system of ecosytem
resilience[7]. There is very complex relationship between the forest ecosystem resilience and its
influencing factors, understanding this relationship can provide very significant information for further
researches of change of forest ecosystem resilience. In this paper the author first reviewed the
development history of the definition of ecosytem resilience, then introduced the main quantitative
measurement methods used in current researches and discussed their disadvantages. It is a hopeful method
to quantitatively measure forest ecosytem resilience with its influencing factors, but this method has not
been used in the current research yet; so this paper summarized the influencing factors recorded in
literatures and discussed the feasibility of this method in the future study.

2. Definition of ecosystem resilience

Holling first introduced the definition of resilience in ecology in the 1970s in order to contribute to
understanding the nonlinear dynamics observed in the ecosytem[8]. He defined resilience as the ability of
the ecosystem to aborb the change in the state variables, driving variables and parameters and continue to
exist[8]. Pimm proposed the different viewpoint in 1984[9]. Since then there were hot debates on the
definition of ecosystem resilience among the ecologists and a lot of different viewpoints were proposed,
but reaching no consensus on how to make the definition of ecosytem resilience opreational or even how
to define it.
There are mainly two viewpoints on the definition of ecosystem resilience, i.e., engineering resilience
and ecological resilience. Engineering resilience refers to the capacity of an ecosystem to return to its
more-or-less exact pre-disturbance state[6]; it is consistent with the definition given by Lep噔 and Pimm,
although Holling initially defined it as stability[8, 10]. Ecological resilience means the ability of an
ecosystem to absorb impacts before a threshold is reached where the ecosystem changes into a different
state[11]. Ecosystem resilience is related to the ecosytem state and external disturbance, difference
between the two definitions results from theire hypotheses on the ecosystem state. Engineering resilience
assumes there is only a single equilibrium or stable state of the ecosystem; While the hypothesis of
ecological resilience is there are multiple stable states. In essence engineering resilience is the ability of
an ecosystem to return to the original equilibrium in one certain state after disturbance; while ecological
resilience reflects the threshold where the ecosytem state changes.
The multiple meanings of ecosystem resilience can lead to different management behaviors, so it is
imperative to make a definite and measurable definition[6]. Generally speaking, ecosytem resilience
reflects the ability of an ecosystem to deal with disturbance such as storms and fire while not change into
a different state[6]. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself if destroyed[12]. Forests
are engineering resilient in the sense that they may recover, after a period of time, from a catastrophic
disturbance to their pre-disturbance state maintaining, more-or-less, the original species composition[2];
so it is proper to define the resilience of forest ecosytems as the capacity of an forest ecosystem to return
to the pre-condition state following a perturbation, including maintaining its essential characteristics
taxonomic composition, structures, ecosystem functions, and process rates[2].
 Haiming Yan et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 2201 – 2206 2203

3. Measurement methods

The current researchers mainly studied the ecosystem resilience with the models and surrogates. In the
current researches with the models, the ecosystem resilience is generally measured with the ability of an
ecosystem to maintain its structure and function in face of stresses[6]. The engineering resilience is
generally measured with the ability of the system to resist disturbance and the rate at which it returns to
the equilibrium or stable state following disturbance[13]. While the ecological resilience is measured with
the magnitude of the maximum disturbance the ecosystem can absorb before it changes into another
state[8, 11]. The current researchers generally selected on key ecosystem indicator such as the key species,
then estimated the time for the key ecosystem indicator to recover from the stressed state to the stable
state (Tr) and the maximum stress the ecosystem can absorb (MS) with models such as CENTURY model
and GAP model[14]. Ecosystem resilience could be measured by fitting a dynamic model to time series
and calculating equilibria in principle, however, obtaining adequate fits of such models requires
extraordinary data, which are not usually available in practice[6]; so this method is not very practical in
fact. Besides, the ecosystem is very complex, the recovery of one key indicator cannot respresent the
recovery of the whole ecosystem functions, so this method is somewhat partial[13].
Since the ecosystem is influenced by various factors and it is necessary to measure the threshold of the
ecosystem in each stable state, it is difficult to directly measure the ecosystem resilience[6]. However, it
is plausible to deduce it indirectly, i.e., find some attributes that are related to eocsystem resilience are
measurable and then select some factors that can maintain and promote ecosystem resilience as
surrogates[5]. Bennett et al. presented a method in which simple systems models are used as a framework
to identify resilience surrogates for case studies[15]; the process of constructing a systems model for a
particular case offers a path for identifying important variables related to system resilience; a four-step
process for identifying resilience surrogates was developed through development of systems models,
which provided some experience for quantitatively measuring ecosytem resilience. The resilience
surrogates refer to ecological redundancy, ecological memory, etc. In fact most resilience surrogates refer
to the influencing factors of ecosystem resilience. Gao Jiangbo, et al. have selected three influencing
factors of ecosystem resilience to quantitatively assess the ecosystem resilience in the regions across
Qinghai-Tibet railway[16]; however, they have not explained the theoretical foundation for selecting
these influencing factors in their paper.

4. Influencing factors of ecosystem resilience

Many kinds of influencing factors of ecosystem resilience have been recorded in the literatures, e.g.,
biodiversity and variability of habitats; but on the whole, the research on influencing factors of ecosystem
resilience was far from systematic and there were many disputes on the recorded influencing factors. As
for the forest ecosystem resilience, the possible influencing factors include the followings.
Ecosystem resilience is an emergent ecosytem attribute that is endowed by biodiversity at multiple
levels[11], however, there have been a lot of ongoing debates on the effects of biodiversity in eocsystem
resilience. Some researchers found the ecosystem resilience was positively correlated with
biodiversity[17], some other researchers indicated the ecosystem resilience increased with biodiversity,
approaching a line[18]; besides some researchers found the ecosystem resilience did not increase with
biodiversity[10]. The biodiversity is usually represented with the biodiversity index, the contradiction
among previous researches may result from the ignorance of the roles of different species in the
ecosystem. Different species play different roles in the eocsystem, the species are not equally important.
The difference in species composition influences the ecosystem resilience, this may have led to the
disagreement among existing researches. Walker seperated the functional groups into drivers and
2204 Haiming Yan et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 2201 – 2206

passengers; the drivers are the key species that control the future of the ecosystem[19]; while the
passengers have no significant influence on ecosytem resilience. By contrast the traditional biodiversity
index used in previous researches cannot reflect the difference of the role of these species.
The ecological memory is a key component of ecosystem resilience[11], it refers to the network of
species, their dynamic interactions between each other and the environment, and the combination of
structures that make reorganization after disturbance possible[20]. The ecological memory includes
internal and external ecological memory; the internal ecological memory consists of the biological
structures that serve as foci for regeneration and allow species to colonize, and those species that survive
within the disturbed area, i.e., structural legacies and biological legacies. The external ecological memory
provides sources of and support areas for species colonizing disturbed patches[21]. In the latter case,
since the disperse of many plant seeds is limited by various factors, these factors influencing immigration,
such as the distance to the seed source and life history strategy of species, are crucial to the reorganization
of an ecosystem[20]. There have been relatively fewer researches on the ecologicla memory so far,
further researches are still needed.
Ecological succession is greatly influenced by the local conditions, ecosytems recover most quickly in
regions with favorable micro-habitat, e.g. the well-watered zone[21]. The habitat influences ecosystem
resilience in many ways. For example, the climate mainly influences the rates of photosynthesis,
respiration and other forest processes by the range of temperature, radioation and moisture in the long
term. The ecosystem resilience at the local level depends on the ability of the landscape to maintain
infiltration, water storage capacity, and nutrient cycles[22], all of which are threatened by soil loss and
structural change. So the property of an inherently resilient ecosystem would contain soils that are
physically resistant to change.
There are still disputes on whether human beings are part of the ecosystem, however, human beings do
have changed ecosytem resilience. The accummulative effects of human activities have significant
influence on ecosystem structure and dynamics. The influence of human beings on the forest ecosytem
include the forest area decrease, habitat fragmentation and change in species composition, etc[23].
There are also debates on the influence of productivity on ecosystem resilience. Moore, et al. found
ecosystem resilience increased with primary productivity, which was known as “resilience-productivity
hypothesis”[24]. However, the research of Stone, et al found that the relationship between resilience and
productivity was neither simple nor monotonic[25]. Some other researchers found no general relationship
between resilience and productivity[26]. In fact, the productivity reflects the ability of the ecosystem to
regenerate, but they aren’t completely relevant to each other, which may has resulted in contradiction
among previous conclusions.

5. Conclusion and discussion

The diagnosis of forest ecosytem resilience is an important prerequisite for improving ecological
environment and promoting the sustainable development of the forest ecosytem and socio-economic
system, maintainence of forest ecosytem resilience is important mechnism for alleviating and adapting to
climate change. Although the value of ecosystem resilience has been widely accepted, the current
resilience researches still linger on the dispute of definition of ecosytem resilience and case studies, there
has been fewer researches on the influencing factor and mechnism of ecosytem resilience. The previous
researches have found that the foest ecosytem resilience depends on the biological and eclogical
resource[2], but there has been no consensus on influencing factors of forest ecosystem resilience yet. The
existing researches cannot accurately and quantitativly solve questions that are practically significant to
construction of ecosystem resilience such as “which factors determine the ecosystem resilience”and “to
what degree these factors determine the ecosystem resilience”. The eocsystem resilience surrogates
 Haiming Yan et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 2201 – 2206 2205

provide new ideas to quantitative measurement of ecosytem resilience, but since the forest ecosystem
state and functions are dependent on many key variables, how to select variables and determine their
weights is still a problem yet to solve. Brand has summarized three possible measurement methods of
ecosytem resilience[13], all of which have not been used to study ecosytem resilience, so further
researches are still needed.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China: 40801231,41071343 and
National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program): 2010CB950904
Appendix A. *Corresponding author: Zhan Jinyan (1974-), Ph.D, specialized in ecosystem assessment
and environmental informatics. E-mail: zhanjy@bnu.edu.cn.

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