Achievement

A large number of IGERT trainees worked together in a required IGERT course to develop, present and publish (in review) a simplified approach to resilience assessment that reviews the scientific, historical, and social literature to rate the resilience of a social-ecological system in respect to nine resilience properties proposed by Walker and Salt (2006): ecological variability, diversity, modularity, acknowledgment of slow variables, tight feedbacks, social capital, innovation, overlap in governance, and ecosystem services. They evaluate the effects of two large-scale projects, the construction of a major dam and the implementation of an ecosystem recovery program, on the resilience of the central Platte River social-ecological system, located in the State of Nebraska, United States. We use this case study to identify the strengths and weaknesses of applying a simplified approach to resilience assessments.