HR: 14:00h
AN: NB23A-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Resilience as a Component of Ecological Health: Lessons From Stream Ecosystems
AU: * Latimore, J A
EM: jlatimore@hrwc.org
AF: Huron River Watershed Council, 1100 North Main Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 United States
AU: Hayes, D B
EM: hayesdan@msu.edu
AF: Michigan State University, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, 13 Natural Resources Building, East Lansing, MI 48824 United States
AB: Ecological health may be described as a product of system function, structure, and resilience to disturbance. Measures of ecological function, including abundance, productivity, and biomass, are relatively simple to obtain in the field, as are measures of structure, such as species richness and diversity. However, determination of resilience is less than straightforward because of its dependence on the nature of the disturbance and on the choice of endpoints for recovery. We experimentally investigated the recovery process in temperate warmwater stream fish assemblages subject to controlled biotic disturbance. We measured resilience in a number of ways, including level of and time to recovery of assemblage density, richness, and structure. While there was no relationship between the pre-disturbance structure of the fish assemblage and its resilience to disturbance, certain functional and habitat attributes appeared to encourage recovery. We formed a conceptual model of resilience by combining our results with published studies of disturbance in streams. We suggest that an understanding of the recovery process has relevance to theoretical investigations of system structure and function as well as predictive utility for the management of disturbed systems, and therefore warrants further research.
DE: 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly