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We review the evidence of regime shifts in terrestrial and aquatic environments in relation to resilience of complex adaptive ecosystems and the functional roles of biological diversity in this context. The evidence reveals that the likelihood of regime shifts may increase when humans reduce resilience by such actions as removing response diversity, removing whole functional groups of species, or removing whole trophic levels; impacting on ecosystems via emissions of waste and pollutants and climate change; and altering the magnitude, frequency, and duration of disturbance regimes. The combined and often synergistic effects of those pressures can make ecosystems more vulnerable to changes that previously could be absorbed. As a consequence, ecosystems may suddenly shift from desired to less desired states in their capacity to generate ecosystem services. Active adaptive management and governance of resilience will be required to sustain desired ecosystem states and transform degraded ecosystems into fundamentally new and more desirable configurations.
The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics®, in publication since 1970, covers significant developments in the fields of Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Systematics, as they apply to all life on Earth. Reviews cover topics ranging from phylogeny, speciation, and molecular evolution through behavior and evolutionary physiology to population dynamics, ecosystems processes, and applications in invasion biology, conservation, and environmental management. This journal's primary audience are ecologists, environmental scientists, systematists, and evolutionary biologists.
Annual Reviews was founded in 1932 as a nonprofit scientific publisher to help scientists cope with the ever-increasing volume of scientific research. Comprehensive, authoritative, and critical reviews written by the world's leading scientists are now published in twenty-six disciplines in the biological, physical, and social sciences. According to the "Impact Factor" rankings of the Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index, each Annual Review ranks at or near the top of its respective subject category. A searchable title and author database and a collection of abstracts may be found at https://www.annualreviews.org//. The web site also provides information and pricing for all printed volumes, online publications, and reprint collections.
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