Study
Resilience and stability of ecological systems
Holling, C. S.
Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1973
Distinguishes stability — the tendency to return quickly to an equilibrium after small perturbation — from resilience, the magnitude of disturbance a system can absorb before reorganising into a different configuration.
- Studied in
- Animalia, Plantae
- Sample size
- theoretical synthesis with population examples
The two properties are independent, and a system that returns quickly from small disturbances may reorganise readily under a large one, while a variable system may persist through much greater shocks.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Management aimed at reducing variability may reduce a system’s capacity to absorb large disturbance.
How NatureHQ reads it
The distinction that stops "resilient" meaning "recovers quickly". A system that bounces back fast from small knocks and collapses under a large one is stable and not resilient, and the reverse is possible too. The management implication is genuinely uncomfortable: suppressing small disturbances — fires, floods, fluctuations — can reduce the size of shock a system can take.
- Conceptual; measuring resilience in a real system requires knowing where its thresholds are, which is usually only apparent after one is crossed.
- The vocabulary has since been applied far beyond ecology, often without the precision the original draws.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Annual ReviewsPublished in an Annual Reviews journal.
doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.04.110173.000245
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-04.