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Resilience in mediterranean-type ecosystems pp 39–64Cite as

Resilience of animal and plant communities to human disturbance

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Part of the book series: Tasks for vegetation science ((TAVS,volume 16))

Abstract

The five mediterranean regions of the world show a number of marked differences in their history of human disturbance. It has been claimed that they all show greater resilience to current disturbances than do other regions. To resolve this, predictable summer drought is used as a basis for a stress hypothesis which is tested by examining ecosystem resilience. A new property of resilience, damping, is defined and used to classify disturbed ecosystems. Damping is the degree and manner by which the path of restoration is altered by any forces that change the normal restoring force.

Three questions are examined: 1. Do mediterranean ecosystems differ from non-mediterranean ecosystems in their response to human disturbance? A survey of the literature indicates that mediterranean regions are more resilient than most non-mediterranean regions in response to the human disturbances of fire and mining. However, their greater resilience relates more to the frequency of natural disturbances than to the mediterranean climate. 2. Do the ecosystems of the mediterranean regions differ from each other in their response to human disturbance? There is very little evidence to indicate strong differences in response between mediterranean regions. 3. Is there a similar response to different forms of human disturbance (agriculture, clearing, fire, grazing, mining)? There are clear differences in community responses to different types of disturbance. In the same habitat, regeneration after fire is more rapid than after clearing, which is more rapid than the response to mining.

Investigation of the stress hypothesis, framed for mediterranean climates, leads to a more specific hypothesis: ‘The stress produced by summer drought and frequent natural disturbance has played an evolutionary role in producing communities that are more resilient to human disturbance’. Rigorous testing of this hypothesis should reveal why mediterranean climates commonly support communities with high resilience to human disturbance.

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B. Dell A. J. M. Hopkins B. B. Lamont

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Fox, B.J., Fox, M.D. (1986). Resilience of animal and plant communities to human disturbance. In: Dell, B., Hopkins, A.J.M., Lamont, B.B. (eds) Resilience in mediterranean-type ecosystems. Tasks for vegetation science, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4822-8_4

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