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Managing for Resilience:

Discussion notes

Craig Cornu

Resilience Workshop
Jan 24
AM Discussion Session
NOTES BY CRAIG CORNU

Discussion

Facilitated by Paul Hoobyar

(Straw definition of resilience placed on overhead)

Looking for acceptance or congruence on definition

Challenge- What is resilience and what are the components that we think lead to that system behavior? Disjunction between life history patterns …

Mixing definition of resilience between resilience itself and measures of resilience

Some pieces generate resilience be clear what is resilience and what are components that we think lead to that resilience.

Come at discussion differently- resilience as system property or results of components

Four variables affecting resilience- abiotic, biotic, spatial, and temporal

Bob M: Struggle with distinction between resilience system and resilience population. Looking at presumed predictors of resilience. Possible to separate resilience of populations and resilience of ecosystem- can you produce resilient populations of salmon using hatchery methods?

Need to capture relationships between variables suggested (abiotic, biotic, spatial, and temporal) e.g How replaceable are some of these life histories- if some abiotic changes take out some of them out will others compensate for them?

Resilience is minimizing risk of catastrophic failure (in system or for population?)

Separation between science and cultural issues associated with resilience. Needs to be real to “Joe average”. At what level are we trying to work?

PH- partial answer is that breakout sessions will be place to talk about political, social, economic connections.

Resilience might not be the right word for a new paradigm in salmon management- Suggestion: Sustained unsubsidized (or less-subsidized) productivity that would be a net gain to society.

Back to cause and effect: Resilience is the property of the system (biological or social/cultural framework) that allows for sustainability. What’s the end result or what’s the property that allows that? In salmonland, sustainability is agreed to be good- everyone’s comfortable with it- but how we get sustainability or an unsubsidized version of that sustainability is with the resilience of these systems – biological components or social/cultural components.

Resilience is subset of sustainability concept or a way to get there. The elements Si presented were indicators of resilience because it’s hard to measure resilience as a whole property- maybe we can come up with ways- at least we have indicators that can get us there. There’s a 3 rd component dealing with explicit recognition of the social and economic part of resilience- captured by ecological functions linked to human population- example- ecosystem services benefiting society as a whole. Might not be clear in definition. Put this into definition of resilience?

People have talked about resilience in lake systems and grasslands- metrics related to system properties that provide services. For salmon key metric would be abundance or productivity as the key variables that would tell you how ecosystem services are related to people- that’s what they care about. Literature what are key forcing agents that move to higher or lower levels of productivity? e.g., biodiversity, life history diversity, harvest rates, habitat quality?

BM- one feature of resilience is that it’s about fewer wild fluctuations- not better productivity but more consistent productivity and more predictable year to year abundance. Not always a good thing if that more predictable level is lower than you want.

Talking about a buffering of change not necessarily a high level or low level.(?)

Human aspects in definition- resilience in human populations is as complex and detailed as the question of resilience in salmon populations. Recommend not trying to pull humans into def of salmon resilience but acknowledge their explicit links. There are human impacts on salmon and salmon impacts on humans. Stability of salmon harvests might be one social objective, it doesn’t always have to be the social objective- depends entirely on how the human system is configured. Some human systems have adapted to high levels of variability- We need to understand human systems – variability and diversity- and understand that there are direct links- need to craft objectives in a way that can manage trade offs among components of the ecosystem. And how do we establish the limits and thresholds of the trade offs that are inherently part of the task.

Parallel w/economics: what would economists do with this? No simple or single answer. Depends on how resilience is defined.

Keep in mind that salmon in different systems – defining self sustaining salmon population can look different in different places- multiple domains of stability- some populations with low abundance or low diversity can be sustainable

Proposal to have smaller group take a crack at defining resilience based on discussion- agreed

Key question: with respect to resilience, what aspects of resilience are determined by the ecosystem properties are altered irreversibly by human influences- is there a scale of ecosystem organization or populations at which the erosion of the structure of the organization and dynamics of the ecosystem is resulting in an irreversible decline in the possible state of the ecosystem?

Tie into the institutional framework and decision making processes that those human activities and alterations are driven by– add 3 rd bullet dealing with institutions and decision processes. Need to understand the human processes that will affect resilience.

Session adjourned for break.

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