What does it mean for an ecosystem to be resilient?
It’s a question that intrigues Rob Salguero-Gómez, a professor at the University of Oxford. His academic roots stretch back to Utah, where he studied near Vernal during his Ph.D. program.
“Resilience is the ability of a system to either withstand a disturbance, or if it fails to resist it, to recover quickly from it," he said.
Why does ecosystem resilience matter, though?
“Well, think about pretty much everything that you had today for breakfast. A lot of the fibers that you're wearing today, all of that comes from Mother Nature," Salguero-Gómez said. "So a system that is not resilient would not be able to provide you with the ecological services, you're effectively surrounded by.”
But resilience doesn’t always mean resisting change. Salguero-Gómez says some species rely on disturbance.
“A disturbance is not always something bad.”
He points to the Portuguese sundew, a carnivorous plant endemic to Spain and Portugal. It relies on fiery disturbances to germinate seeds. But regional efforts to suppress fires can disrupt that process.
Salguero-Gómez and his team discovered another type of disturbance that helps the plant reproduce.
“What shocked us was actually that there was a second agent that was facilitating the recruitment of the seeds, and those were goats!”
Salguero-Gómez says as goats move through the landscape, their hooves disturb the soil, exposing buried seeds to sunlight — another cue for germination.
But even among these species that can withstand change, there are limits. Salguero-Gómez says long-lived species may be better able to resist disturbances, but intense events can leave them slower to recover.
“Species that live long, they tend to resist disturbances better than species that live short. But if the intensity of the disturbance is really high; fire, a drought, etc. etc., once you pass that point of resistance, they will take way longer to recover.”
For Salguero-Gómez, resilience isn’t simply about whether a population survives a disturbance, but how it responds — and what that response indicates about its future.
“Resilience is good, and resilience should be protected.”
He says as environmental pressures mount, that knowledge can help scientists and land managers anticipate change and make informed conservation decisions.
