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Chapter 5: Problem 13

What is meant by ecosystem resilience? What can cause it to fail? How does this relate to environmental tipping points?

Short Answer

Expert verified
Ecosystem resilience is an ecosystem's ability to recover from disturbances. Factors like overexploitation of resources, pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and habitat destruction can cause resilience to fail. Environmental tipping points are thresholds where the ecosystem changes into a new state and can't recover to its original state. Ecosystem resilience and tipping points are related through the ecosystem's capacity to avoid reaching these tipping points. Weaker resilience means the ecosystem is more likely to reach the tipping point.

Step by step solution

01

Define Ecosystem Resilience

Ecosystem resilience refers to the ability of an ecosystem to withstand changes and recover from disturbances such as natural disasters, human activities or introduction of alien species. It's an ecosystem's capacity to absorb recurrent disturbances like hurricanes, floods, and fires, and still retain its basic structure and functionality. In simpler terms, it is the power of nature to heal itself.
02

Identify Causes of Ecosystem Resilience Failure

Many factors can cause ecosystem resilience to fail. Overexploitation of natural resources, pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and habitat destruction can greatly reduce an ecosystem's resilience. When an ecosystem has lost its resilience, it can radically change and lose its capacity to recover. This is when a tipping point has been reached.
03

Explain Environmental Tipping Points

Environmental tipping points are thresholds where the pressures of environmental change become so intense that ecosystems transform into new states with different structures or functions. Once these tipping points are crossed, the ecosystem may no longer be able to return to its original state, even when the pressures are reduced or removed. This relates to ecosystem resilience in that the latter determines the capacity of the ecosystem to avoid reaching the tipping point. Weaker resilience often means that tipping point is more likely to be reached.

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