Nature, Culture, and Conservation in the Anthropocene - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 143

(a)

Reorganization Conservation

K

α

r

Ω

Exploitation Release

Weak Strong

Connectedness

Late Ming/Early Qing

(b)

3

α 2.5

Disturbed land
Soil erosion

Dali Kingdom 2

1. 5

Nanzhao

1
0.5 ?

Han People

r

Bronze Age

K

0

Ω

-0.5 ?

r

K

-1

-1.5

Minimum
resilience

Maximum
resilience

Minimum
resilience

-2

3000 2500 2000 1500

cal yr BP

1000 500 0 -200

Fig u re 7.1 Adaptive cycles. (a) Conceptual representation of an adaptive cycle through exploitation (r),
conservation (K), release (Ω), and reorganization (α), illustrating how potential and connectedness vary
at different points in the cycle. Short arrows indicate slow changes, long arrows indicate fast changes.
Resilience is another dimension and is lowest in the conservation phase (K) when systems are at their
most connected and therefore 'brittle' (Gunderson and Holling 2001). (b) The land use-soil system in the
Miju catchment, Yunnan, SW China, over the past 3,000 years, showing proxy curves for disturbed land
and soil erosion, with documented periods of human impact and the corresponding possible phases (r,
K, Ω, and α) of the adaptive cycle and likely periods of maximum and minimum resilience in the erosion
system (Dearing 2008)