concept

Ecological resilience

The capacity of a living system to absorb large perturbations, change, and still keep its core identity, structure, and functional feedbacks — sharply distinct from *resistance*, the ability to not be damaged in the first place. The ecologist C. S. Holling drew the line in 1973: resistance is armour, resilience is the ability to bounce back after a blow. A system can be weak in resistance (the forest still burns) yet ferociously strong in resilience (the forest regrows) — and it is resilience, not resistance, that lets a network survive repeated catastrophe.