Resilience and stability of ecological systems.
Resilience and stability of ecological systems.
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DOI：
10.1146/annurev.es.04.110173.000245
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发表时间：
1973-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Holling, C.S.
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文献类型：
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作者：
Holling, C.S.
个体死亡，种群消失，物种灭绝。这是世界观之一。但是，另一种世界观与其说关注生物体的存在或不存在，不如说关注生物体的数量及其数量的恒定程度。这是观察系统行为的两种非常不同的方式，这种观点的有用性在很大程度上取决于有关系统的属性。如果我们正在检查一个由工程师设计的特定设备，以便在一个相当窄的可预测外部条件范围内执行特定任务，我们可能更关心的是一致的不变性能，其中稍微偏离性能目标就会立即被抵消。因此，对系统行为的定量观察是必不可少的。由于注意力集中在实现恒定性上，关键事件似乎是振荡的幅度和频率。但是，如果我们面对的是一个系统，它深受外部变化的影响，并且不断地面临着意外事件，那么它的行为的稳定性就不如关系的持久性重要了。因此，注意力转移到定性和存在与否的问题上。我们在理论和经验生态学中的分析传统在很大程度上继承自经典物理学及其应用变体的发展。不可避免地，有一种倾向是强调数量而不是质量，因为在这个传统中，重要的是不仅要知道一个数量比另一个数量大，而且要知道到底大多少。同样重要的是，如果一个量波动，知道它的振幅和波动周期。但是，这种取向可能只是反映了在一个领域发展的分析方法，因为它是有用的，然后转移到另一个地方，它可能不是。因此，我们对自然系统的传统观点与其说是一种有意义的现实，不如说是一种感性的便利。在某些年份，猫头鹰会更多，老鼠会更少，而在另一些年份，情况则相反。鱼类种群的消长是一种自然状态，昆虫种群的变化范围可以超过极限，
Individuals die, populations disappear, and species become extinct. That is one view of the world. But another view of the world concentrates not so much on presence or absence as upon the numbers of organisms and the degree of constancy of their numbers. These are two very different ways of viewing the behavior of systems and the usefulness of the view depends very much on the properties of the system concerned. If we are examining a particular device designed by the engineer to perform specific tasks under a rather narrow range of predictable external conditions, we are likely to be more concerned with consistent nonvariable performance in which slight departures from the performance goal are imm~ diately counteracted. A quantitative view of the behavior of the system is, therefore, essential. With attention focused upon achieving constancy, the critical events seem to be the amplitude and frequency of oscillations. But if we are dealing with a system profoundly affected by changes external to it, and continually confronted by the unexpected, the constancy of its behavior becomes less important than the persistence of the relationships. Attention shifts, therefore, to the qualitative and to questions of existence or not.Our traditions of analysis in theoretical and empirical ecology have been largely inherited from developments in claSsical physics and its applied variants. Inevitably, there has been a tendency to emphasize the quantitative rather than the qualitative, for it is important in this tradition to know not just that a quantity is larger than another quantity, but precisely how much larger. It is similarly important, if a quantity fluctuates, to know its amplitude and period of fluctuation. But this orientation may simply reflect an analytic approach developed in one area because it was useful and then transferred to another where it may not be. Our traditional view of natural systems, therefore, might well be less a meaningful reality than a perceptual convenience. There can in some years be more owls and fewer mice and in others, the reverse. Fish populations wax and wane as a natural condition, and insect populations can range over extremes that only logarithmic