Resilience and the unfortunate potential for doublespeak in ecosystem management

Resilience has grown into an increasingly critical, though evolving, concept in ecology and ecosystem management after its initial application to ecology by Holling in 1973. It has become somewhat unmoored from its original Holling definition over the last 45 years, however, and its use in relation to climate change effects and adaptation can be particularly confusing and even misleading. The Climate Change Response Framework (https://forestadaptation.org/) is a collaborative effort to provide relevant, credible information and tools to natural resources professionals to help them more effectively adapt to climate change - and also clearly communicate about adaptation of existing ecosystems. The Framework has created planning menus of adaptation strategies that resist change, enhance resilience, or foster transition in key ecosystem traits. Ongoing analyses of >250 adaptation projects developed to date have provided insights into the application of resilience concepts to adaptation planning. Although practitioners typically identified adaptation actions across the resistance-resilience-transition continuum within individual planning efforts, particular qualities of projects had greater association with resilience actions. Relative to transition actions, resilience-focused actions placed a greater emphasis on maintaining existing ecosystem traits instead of desired future conditions of individual resources, such as timber production or water quality. Linkages were observed between concern over particular climate impacts and resilience-focused adaptation responses: concern for warming winters and increased pests correlated to actions to increase species/structural diversity in forests; concern for precipitation changes led to actions to increase connectivity of aquatic systems (extreme rainfall) and sustaining hydrologic functions (altered seasonality). Examples of resilience-focused adaptation highlight that referencing resilience in the context of existing ecosystem traits can lead to very different discussions than in the context of future outcomes, necessitating clear communication about "resilience strategies" - replacing the forest to save the forest is not a resilience strategy for the existing forest. We will provide case studies to illustrate these points.