An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico (2013) / Chapter Skim
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3 Resilience and Ecosystem Services
3 Resilience and Ecosystem Services
Pages 47-70
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From page 47... ...
This chapter addresses resilience and its relationship to ecosystem services. Ecosystems are subject to natural disturbances such as fires, floods, droughts, and disease outbreaks, as well as human-caused disturbances, including oil spills.
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From page 48... ...
The final sections discuss options to manage systems to enhance resilience and approaches to measuring changes in resilience. RESILIENCE IN SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO ECOSYSTEM SERVICES Defining Engineering and Ecological Resilience The study of resilience emerged primarily in ecology, with initial applications focused on the resilience of ecosystems (Holling, 1973)
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From page 49... ...
A sufficiently strong disturbance will cause the rubber band to break or the steel rod to bend, which may lead to a new type of equilibrium discussed below under the heading of ecological resilience. Ecologists have a long history of studying disturbance and recovery.
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Multiple equilibria generate the potential for a system to cross critical thresholds and flip between equilibria (see Figure 3.1)
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Salt marshes, such as those found in the GoM, provide a good example of negative feedbacks that maintain ecosystem conditions in the face of disturbances and long-term stresses. Salt marshes accumulate sediments at rates that can keep the marsh in equilibrium with sea level even with sea level rise (Morris et al., 2002)
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From page 52... ...
However, if the rate of sea level rise is too great, then a decrease in elevation of the marsh will decrease primary production and sediment accretion and the marsh surface will fall further behind rising sea level, culminating in the collapse of the marsh and loss of ecosystem services. Consequently, the most stable elevation is one that is higher than optimal for maximum vegetation growth.
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From page 53... ...
Social scientists have begun to incorporate notions of resilience into their analyses of social systems. Perhaps the most relevant social science analysis in the context of ecosystem services is "community resilience." Community resilience refers to a community's ability to recover from losses imposed by disturbances, such as oil spills and hurricanes, without significant external assistance (Cutter et al., 2008; Mileti, 1999)
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From page 54... ...
This adaptability is part of resilience." Adaptability may require that some aspects of the system change in order for the whole system to retain essential system properties. For example, sea level rise may require shifts in the location of coastal marshes as well as human infrastructure to maintain desirable ecosystem services and to avoid future damages from flooding.
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Maintaining a stable supply of ecosystem services, therefore, depends on having resilient ecosystems. The GoM ecosystem is subject to periodic disturbances from hurricanes or oil spills, which can cause temporary declines in service provision.
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From page 56... ...
Finally, the section discusses ecosystem restoration, which is a management strategy of particular interest after a human-caused disturbance such as an oil spill. Managing for General and Specific Resilience When managers know the specific types of disturbances they are likely to face, they can often take specific measures to increase the system's resilience to these disturbances (Adger et al., 2005)
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From page 57... ...
: Nine Attributes Seven Generic Principles Resilience Strategy Management of Resilience for Enhancing Resilience Maintain diversity, Maintain heterogeneity Promote and sustain Maintain diversity and variability, and diversity in all forms redundancy redundancy (biological, landscape, social, and economic) Preserve redundancy Embrace and work with ecological variability rather than attempt to control and reduce it Manage feedbacks Tighten feedback loops Tighten feedbacks Manage slow variables and slowly changing Focus policy on slowly and feedback variables changing variables associated with thresholds Manage modularity and Sustain modularity Modularity Manage connectivity connectivity Apply adaptive Reduce uncertainty Emphasize learning, Encourage learning and management, learning; experimentation, and experimentation anticipate potential Expect surprise locally developed rules, Foster understanding of future outcomes and embrace change social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems Improve governance Build trust Promote trust, Broaden participation and increase social social networks, and capital leadership Do unto others as you Include redundancy Promote polycentric would have them do in governance governance systems unto you structures and a mix of institutional types Include all ecosystem services in development proposals and assessments 57
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From page 58... ...
Despite low plant biodiversity, salt marshes are extremely resilient, even in the face of the DWH oil spill (Silliman et al., 2012)
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From page 59... ...
. The reliance of its economy on specific natural resources makes the GoM region vulnerable to shocks such as the DWH oil spill.
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However, marine systems are inherently highly interconnected, and sometimes interconnections provide resilience, such as when local populations are reestablished through recolonization after local extinction events. An objective of an ecosystem services approach is to understand interconnections, but our ability to manage connectivity/ modularity in practical situations is often limited.
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. Of particular importance to managing complex systems is having some ability to predict regime shifts prior to their occurrence.
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Federal Governance Options and Political Limitations Although resilience management can result in many benefits, translation of resilience theory into improved agency decision making for ecosystem service management will be difficult. Because resilience management represents a significant change from current management priorities or decision-making processes, congressional authorization in the form of new or amended laws (Ruhl, 2012)
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From page 63... ...
Although the maintenance of resilient ecosystems has many benefits, including F provision of a steady flow of ecosystem services, political, legislative, and institutional barriers may impede implementation of resilience management. Option: Implement a Portfolio Approach to Management How might governments manage publicly owned resources in a way that minimizes disruption to the flow of ecosystem services during and after a disaster?
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From page 64... ...
So, Congress could, for example, modify the MSA and the MMPA so that managers would be required to apply a range of strategies over a set of geographically defined management areas or over a set of distinct fish or mammal populations. Some areas or species could be managed using more conservative versions of the traditional optimum yield or potential biological removal tools, and some areas or species could be managed using entirely different approaches and with different ends in mind.
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From page 65... ...
Systems with low resilience may recover slowly or switch to a different regime and fail to return to original conditions. In the case of the DWH oil spill, of particular interest is how well restoration efforts will work to recover ecosystems to pre-spill conditions, both in terms of restoring the provision of ecosystem services and increasing resilience to further disturbances and ongoing stresses.
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From page 66... ...
Examples of abiotic thresholds include saltwater intrusion into a freshwater wetland as a consequence of rising sea level. Whether recovery of ecosystem services or restoration of the ecosystem is the goal, the endpoints must be defined in terms of practical metrics FIGURE 3.4 Summary of the state (boxes)
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From page 67... ...
Measurement of ecological resilience is a more complex matter. Social-ecological systems are often too complex to enable researchers to accurately model potential regime shifts or to have much confidence in simulation results.
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From page 68... ...
depend on having good baseline data and may vary depending on what ecosystem service or system component is measured and what type and severity of disturbance is considered. Mea suring how likely a system is to cross a critical threshold and undergo a regime shift (ecological resilience)
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From page 69... ...
Focusing on the resilience of a particular state of a habitat (e.g., fragmented versus continuous marsh) can also lead to resilient ecosystem services that are connected to a specific state of the habitat.
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