RESILIENCE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 58

United States Society for Range Management and the Australian Rangeland
Society. Rangeland management was 'more than science': it was closely concerned
with the economics and business directions of pastoral enterprises. Nonetheless, in
practice, it was overwhelmingly biophysical in emphasis, and mathematical in
methodology. In a major review of the Rangeland Journal , Witt and Page (2000)
showed that 89 per cent of the nearly 300 articles published in the journal were
biophysical in focus.
By the end of the 1980s, there was a growing awareness that management
strategies might have unexpected consequences, and rangelands management
scientists sought to theorise their causes. Irreversible change and the new systems
created by shocks became the focus for their work, as they sought understandings
of opportunism and drivers of non-equilibrium biophysical systems. Rather than
managing for landscape stability, the research question of the late 1960s (see, for
example, Ross, 1969, who was cited by Noy-Meir in 1973), Westoby, Walker and
Noy-Meir observed that 'Vegetation changes in response to grazing have often
been found to be not continuous, not reversible or not consistent' (1989: 268).
Thus, a stable landscape may not be the product of a steady management strategy.
Brian Walker, the third player in this paper, quickly became central to the resilience
science story. Walker is a southern African rangeland scientist who moved to
Australia in 1985 to head up CSIRO's Rangeland and Wildlife Division and is now
an Australian citizen. Walker, like Holling, is a mathematically-literate, strongly
applied biologist. Walker's focus for the past two decades has been Australian
rangeland country - arid and semi-arid.
By the time Westoby, Walker and Noy-Meir were writing in 1989, theoretical
ideas in ecology sought to model states and transitions in whole landscapes.
Transitions could be triggered by natural events or management actions. They
could occur quickly and may be irreversible. Most importantly, they observed that
'the system does not come to rest halfway through a transition' (ibid.: 268).
Essentially the system flips, or moves into being a new system. The paper was the
final nail in the coffin of climax ecosystems. The end of equilibrium theory pushed
arid zone ecology, rangeland management science and resilience science closer
together, and fostered a shared interest in the mathematics of heterogeneity.
Interdisciplinarity, networks and trustworthy places
Resilience thinking in the twenty-first century displays a high level of cross-
publishing, co-authorship and cross-citation. The network is tight. The key names,
Holling, Noy-Meir, Walker and Westoby recur, along with newer names like
ecologist Carl Folke, later head of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and global
water expert Johan Rockström. Rockström was senior author of the planetary
boundaries paper, mentioned above, which won him 'Swede of the Year' award
in 2009 for his work on bridging science on climate change to policy and society
(Rockström et al ., 2009). Two years later he was ranked the most influential person
on environmental issues in Sweden.