Purpose of Review

Resilience is a key concept to deal with an uncertain future in forestry. In recent years, it has received increasing attention from both research and practice. However, a common understanding of what resilience means in a forestry context and how to operationalise it is lacking. Here, we conducted a systematic review of the recent forest science literature on resilience in the forestry context, synthesizing how resilience is defined and assessed.

Recent Findings

Based on a detailed review of 255 studies, we analysed how the concepts of engineering resilience, ecological resilience and social-ecological resilience are used in forest sciences. A clear majority of the studies applied the concept of engineering resilience, quantifying resilience as the recovery time after a disturbance. The two most used indicators for engineering resilience were basal area increment and vegetation cover, whereas ecological resilience studies frequently focus on vegetation cover and tree density. In contrast, important social-ecological resilience indicators used in the literature are socio-economic diversity and stock of natural resources. In the context of global change, we expected an increase in studies adopting the more holistic social-ecological resilience concept, but this was not the observed trend.

Summary

Our analysis points to the nestedness of these three resilience concepts, suggesting that they are complementary rather than contradictory. It also means that the variety of resilience approaches does not need to be an obstacle for operationalisation of the concept. We provide guidance for choosing the most suitable resilience concept and indicators based on the management, disturbance and application context.

中文翻译：

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回顾森林科学中弹性概念的使用

审查目的

复原力是应对林业不确定未来的一个关键概念。近年来，它越来越受到研究和实践的关注。然而，对于林业环境中的复原力意味着什么以及如何实施复原力缺乏共识。在这里，我们对最近有关林业背景下恢复力的森林科学文献进行了系统回顾，综合了如何定义和评估恢复力。

最近的发现

基于对 255 项研究的详细回顾，我们分析了如何在森林科学中使用工程复原力、生态复原力和社会生态复原力的概念。绝大多数研究应用了工程弹性的概念，将弹性量化为干扰后的恢复时间。工程复原力最常用的两个指标是基底面积增量和植被覆盖度，而生态复原力研究通常侧重于植被覆盖度和树木密度。相比之下，文献中使用的重要社会生态复原力指标是社会经济多样性和自然资源存量。在全球变化的背景下，我们预计采用更全面的社会生态复原力概念的研究会增加，但这不是观察到的趋势。

概括

我们的分析指出了这三个弹性概念的嵌套性，表明它们是互补的，而不是相互矛盾的。这也意味着弹性方法的多样性不必成为概念实施的障碍。我们根据管理、干扰和应用环境为选择最合适的弹性概念和指标提供指导。