The use of discontinuities and functional groups to assess relative resilience in complex systems
The use of discontinuities and functional groups to assess relative resilience in complex systems
复制标题
DOI：
10.1007/s10021-005-0147-x
复制
发表时间：
2005-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Johnson, AR
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Allen, CR;Gunderson, L;Johnson, AR
当一个系统的恢复力被超过，系统发生质的变化时，这是显而易见的。然而，在证明已超过复原能力之前，如何衡量一个系统的复原力尚不清楚。我们认为，自组织的人类和自然系统是由一个相对较小的一套跨尺度的时间和空间的过程。这些结构化过程应该产生结构和频率的不连续分布，其中不连续标志着从一个尺度到另一个尺度的过渡。复原力不是由系统要素的特性驱动的，而是由这些要素提供的功能及其在尺度内和尺度间的分布驱动的。一个具有弹性的自组织系统应该在尺度内和尺度间保持功能模式，尽管特定元素（例如物种、城市）会发生更替。然而，功能的丧失或在某些规模上功能代表性的减少将降低系统的复原力。因此，某些函数分布应该比其他分布更具弹性。我们建议，确定的不连续性，和量化的功能范围内和跨尺度，生态系统和其他系统的弹性产生相对的措施。我们描述了一套方法来评估的相对弹性的系统的基础上确定的不连续性和量化的分布函数的不连续性。
It is evident when the resilience of a system has been exceeded and the system qualitatively changed. However, it is not clear how to measure resilience in a system prior to the demonstration that the capacity for resilient response has been exceeded. We argue that self-organizing human and natural systems are structured by a relatively small set of processes operating across scales in time and space. These structuring processes should generate a discontinuous distribution of structures and frequencies, where discontinuities mark the transition from one scale to another. Resilience is not driven by the identity of elements of a system, but rather by the functions those elements provide, and their distribution within and across scales. A self-organizing system that is resilient should maintain patterns of function within and across scales despite the turnover of specific elements ( for example, species, cities). However, the loss of functions, or a decrease in functional representation at certain scales will decrease system resilience. It follows that some distributions of function should be more resilient than others. We propose that the determination of discontinuities, and the quantification of function both within and across scales, produce relative measures of resilience in ecological and other systems. We describe a set of methods to assess the relative resilience of a system based upon the determination of discontinuities and the quantification of the distribution of functions in relation to those discontinuities.