Resilience Concepts and Their Application to Coral Reefs

The concept of resilience is long established across a wide-range of disciplines, but its evaluation in many ecosystems has been challenging due to the complexities involved in quantifying a somewhat abstract dynamical phenomenon. We develop a framework of resilience-related concepts and describe their methodological approaches. Seven broad approaches were identified under the three principle concepts of (1) ecological resilience (ecological resilience, precariousness and current attractor), (2) engineering resilience (short-term recovery rate and long-term reef performance), and (3) vulnerability (absolute and relative vulnerability) respectively. Using specific examples, we assess the strengths and limitations of each approach and their capacity to answer common management questions. The current synthesis provides new directions for resilience assessments to be incorporated into management decisions and has implications on the research agenda for advances in resilience assessments.