ES293 Study Guide - Final Guide: Habitat Fragmentation, Habitat Destruction, Adaptive Management
16 Dec 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Highly functional systems have 3 characteristics that make them work: Resilience: the amount of change or disturbance a system can absorb without crossing a threshold, not the same as being static or constant over time. Several loops, with different mechanisms, operating at different scales and with redundancy. Self-organization: capacity of system to make its own structure complex within window of vitality, characterized by goals, positive and negative feedback, autocalysis, often sacrifices for productivity and stability, basic property of living systems. Hierarchy: help subsystems do their jobs better. Decrease information overload, minimize delays: must balance welfare, freedoms, and responsibilities of sub-systems and total system, evolve from the bottom up. Resilient local economy: high number of species doing similar jobs in an ecosystem. Ball = combination of variables in system. System has essentially same structure and function within basin: awareness of state of resilience allows one to preserve or enhance restorative powers.
