The Resilience Dilemma: Incorporating Global Change into Ecosystem Policy and Management
Donald A. Falk. The progression of changes to Earth’s climate poses unprecedented challenges to the science and practice of ecosystem management. The viability of many populations, species, and even ecosystems is increasingly uncertain in their current form. Effects of climate change per se are compounded by multiple interacting stressors, including landscape modification and fragmentation, alerted disturbance regimes (particularly wildland fire), and the increasing presence of non-native invasive species. In framing a meaningful response to global environmental change, all of these interacting factors must be taken into account. For example, the ability of species to migrate in response to changing climate geography—as nearly all species have done during past eras of rapid climate change, such as the end of the last interglacial period—may be impaired by fragmented landscapes that pose barriers…