 In the previous module, we were talking about socio-ecological systems focusing mainly on feedback loops but another important approach to understanding socio-ecological systems is through the lens of adaptive systems theory where we're looking at how the components adapt to change with a primary question being the systems overall resiliency in the face of these changes In this video, we'll be talking about this capacity for adaptation and resilience We'll firstly define some of the key terms before going on to talk about what is called the adaptive cycle which is a model used to visually represent the different stages to the process of change within complex adaptive systems Resilience thinking has gone through a number of different developments since its introduction as an ecological term by C.S. Hohling in the 1970s In the following decades, important contributions were made building upon his original ideas and they expanded into the vocabulary of socio-ecological systems The term resilience has been popularized with organizations building resilience concepts and strategies from governments managing for healthcare issues to the resilience of cities The concept of resilience continues to be applied in a greater variety of fields although a clear approach to modeling and managing resilience is still lacking The term resilience is typically understood as the capacity of a system to maintain functionality given some perturbation Ecological systems and societies are dynamic entities invariably they are subject to periodic disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance When a system is subject to some sort of perturbation or disturbance it responds by moving away from its initial state The tendency of the system to remain close to its equilibrium state despite that disturbance is termed its resistance On the other hand, the speed with which it returns to its initial state after disturbance may be understood as its resilience A socio-ecological system that is exposed to some alteration causing its stress can then either resist this change or adapt to it where resistance involves trying to prevent any alteration to the system at all It is the system's ability to withstand the disturbance with little deformation We can define adaptation as the capacity for the system to change its state in response to some change within its environment An adaptive system then is a system that can change given some external perturbation and this is done in order to optimize or maintain its condition within some environment by modifying its internal state Both resistance and adaptation are trying to achieve the same end of being able to maintain the system's functionality but there are different strategies for achieving this Resistance as a strategy is part of a command and control approach that tries to achieve stability through controlling and regulating the environment towards the required parameters conducive to the system's functionality Adaptation tries to achieve this instead by maintaining a diversity of states in order to be able to respond to changing events These two approaches are fundamental to the dynamic between socio-ecological systems of all kind For example, in thinking about climate change, we can focus on policies that resist it such as putting limits on CO2 emissions or we can think about policies for adapting to it building more agile technology infrastructure and more flexible social institutions The conflict between stability and resilience is important for ecosystems and social systems in many ways as so is often a trade-off between them As we try to increase stability, we often reduce resilience and vice versa In order to increase resilience, we often have to reduce the supporting mechanisms that preserve stability Forest fires are a classical illustration of this For example, around the turn of the 1900s, the United States Forest Service initiated a policy of protecting forests from fires For the next 80 years, they put out all forest fires as quickly as possible More and more leaf litter accumulated on the ground because so much time passed without frequent small fires to get rid of the leaf litter By 1980, leaf litter had accumulated within the forest to the extent that they were increasingly susceptible to fire New forest fires became very difficult to control particularly in the extensive dry areas of the western United States The more the Forest Service tried to protect the forest from fires, the worse the problem became because every fire was more difficult to extinguish and could destroy such large areas of natural habitat Forest protection became increasingly costly because it was necessary to use large numbers of firefighters, fire trucks and airplanes to drop water Despite this effort, thousands of square kilometers of forest were sometimes destroyed in a single fire This example shows how human action trying to resist forest fire in fact reduced the forest natural resilience against large fires The forest managers increased stability by putting out every fire but they reduced resilience because continuous protection from small fires increased the vulnerability of the forest to large-scale destructive fires Another example would be the use of chemical insecticides to remove unwanted insects from agricultural crops Unfortunately, the insecticides may well also kill predator insects as well as pest insects so the natural control of pest insects by predators is lost Without natural control, pest insect populations can increase to devastating numbers when insecticides are not used making the crops and farmers highly dependent upon insecticides in order to maintain the functionality of the agricultural system Here again, we can see the interplay between stability and resilience Adaptive capacity is the product of the system having many different responses to any given perturbation and this is enabled by the system having experienced and survived some perturbation and stored that state to ensure its capacity to adapt to it in the future For example, this is how the immune system works When we use a strategy of resistance and provide stability to the system we may be able to optimize it towards high throughputs as exemplified by modern agriculture but we also reduce its exposure, we reduce the development of those different states reduce the diversity and this makes the system more vulnerable to change as it may now lack the components required to deal with that change when it happens Suffice to say, diversity is an inherent part of adaptive capacity Whereas resistance means trying to externalize change Adaptation involves internalizing it, that is to say being able to change with the change within the environment Resilient systems are ones that can successfully navigate and adapt to the different stages that are an inherent part of the process of change to any complex adaptive system This process of change is best described with reference to what is called the adaptive cycle The adaptive cycle, originally conceptualized by Holling interprets the dynamics of complex ecosystems in response to disturbance and change In terms of its dynamics, the adaptive cycle has been described as moving slowly through a cycle from an exploit stage to a conservation stage to a collapse and release stage to a rapid reorganization It can then begin a new adaptive cycle or alternate may transform it into a new configuration The adaptive cycle is one of the main heuristics used to understand socio-ecological system behavior and the process of adaptation The R stage is the regenerative stage in the process, it is one of growth, a time of expansion and increased complexity The system in the R stage has successfully reorientated post-crisis and there is now plenty of freely available resources for rapid growth and development A time dominated by positive feedback and self-organizing processes of assembly Often marked by abundant resources and entrepreneurial leadership, the system has plentiful untapped and uncommitted potentiality Reconfiguration from unformed supplies into new configurations is essential to the system's maturity Once kick-started along a growth trajectory, many resource flows are available for experimentation In the R stage, network connections are established and interdependencies are built At this stage, positive feedback can work to take hold of some emergent pattern and rapidly scale it up As might be seen in the exponential growth of a start-up company as it rides the positive feedback loop of economics of scale The K stage or equilibrium stage is about controlled development and this equilibrium is a time of stability The system has reached a high level of complexity and connection between its parts In ecological systems, this is equivalent to a climax ecological state corresponding to a dynamic equilibrium of steady state When the entropy production inside a system is balanced by the entropy flow from the system to its environment A mature system in the K stage dynamically performs at a high level of activity and can be seen to be optimal, exhibiting strong stability At this stage, negative feedback cycles dominate over positive feedback But as the system settles into a stable configuration, there is the possibility of rigidity forming Characteristics of a rigid system include very few key nodes with a high connection or influence and low diversity both in nodes and in pathways Additionally, a rigid system is brittle and vulnerable to disturbance because of reduced diversity and inability to self-organize The mature act of specialization weakens resilience by permitting systems to become accustomed to and dependent upon their prevailing conditions In the event of an unanticipated shock, this dependency reduces the ability of the system to adapt to these changes The system may become rigid and seemingly indestructible but stagnation and lack of flexibility may eventually make the system vulnerable to destruction by an external disturbance The omega stage is one of crises and collapse when the system is destroyed by an external disturbance Positive feedback generates dramatic change and the system falls apart as it is pushed out of its stability domain The test of a system in the omega stage is its capacity to survive in the face of extreme disturbance or disordered collapse A system must maintain vital functionality throughout the crisis In human organization, it is often up to leadership both assigned and assumed to identify and prioritize what this means One of the ways that diversity maintained through small-scale disturbances contributes to the resilience of the system is by cultivating a large stock of resources from which it can pull during such a crisis which is essential for the leadership to emerge during the omega stage Emergent leadership occurs when actors not tasked with leadership roles informally assume key positions during crisis Failure to survive this stage can result in a complete breakdown of the system cycle Reorganization is a time when the system begins to recover from falling apart It is a creative time when change can take a variety of possible directions That is, the system has the possibility of moving into a variety of new stability domains Chance can be important to the way the system reorganizes, determining which new stability domain it enters into The growth stage that follows reorganization depends on the course initiated during reorganization To reorientate after crisis, the system must reorganize these pathways and node relations The release stage provides opportunities for new elements to enter and become more prominent in the system At this stage in the cycle, the probability of several alternative future states is high The system can reorganize and return to its former regime, shift to a different regime with similar structure but with changes in feedback and dominant processes, or transform into a new regime with novel state variables and feedback loops As novel societal or ecological groups emerge, some will succeed and some will fail And the adaptive cycle of R, K, Amiga and Alpha stages may then repeat Although the adaptive cycle is a heuristic model, it does tell us something about the stages to the process of adaptation And with it, we can understand resilience as the adaptive capacity to successfully navigate all the different stages within the adaptive cycle Where some stages will involve only small adaptations, others will require full-scale transformations to the whole system But it is in the socio-ecological systems capacity to effectively adapt to these changes that the system may maintain a dynamic evolutionary state allowing it to develop over time In this video, we've been talking about adaptive capacity and resilience The capacity of a socio-ecological system to maintain functionality given some alteration We talked about the two fundamentally different strategies for achieving this, resistance and adaptation Where resistance involves trying to prevent any alteration to the system by controlling the environment and reducing the input values to the system, thus enabling it to function optimally by reducing disturbances Whereas we talked about adaptation as involving the maintenance of diversity so as to be able to generate the appropriate response required to counterbalance the disturbance, thus managing to maintain functionality We then talked about the adaptive cycle as a model to the process of change within complex adaptive systems as it describes four different regimes of exploitation, conservation, release and reorganization through which the system can evolve