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3.2.2.      Introducing ecological resilience and vulnerability

It has long been understood that ecological systems are not stable assemblages of species in a static environment; rather they are dynamic systems able to withstand stress and shocks yet still maintain function and remain within a general state. Ecological resilience denotes the capacity of an ecosystem to withstand disturbance without changing self-organized processes (Gunderson 2000). The terms resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity of ecological systems to both natural and anthropogenic stressors were introduced into the ecological literature by Holling (1973) to explain how a natural system functions and changes over time in response to such disturbance and naturally fluctuating environmental processes.