Since Boris Cyrulnik’s studies were published, the term resilience has been used to describe an individual’s capacity to overcome trauma. In ecology, considering resilience means thinking about how ecological systems adapt and are transformed after a major disruption: how do forests regenerate after fires? How are cities rebuilt after tornadoes?
At a time when our planet is going through numerous ecological crises (overfishing, desertification, deforestation, tsunamis, climate change and more), it is becoming urgent to understand how to develop or reinforce our ecosystems’ resilience. Over the past 30 years, scientists (in North America and Northern Europe, essentially) have been studying the our ecosystems’ dynamics in order to understand what makes them resilient, and how and in what circumstances we can help speed up natural resilience processes…
Plenty of lavishly illustrated examples make the concept extremely clear and concrete: New Orleans, the Great Barrier Reef; the Australian Outback, several UNESCO World Heritage or Biosphere Reserves in France, like the Causse Méjean and the Camargue, and other places, have all survived crises and established adaptive measures.

In this well-documented book, the authors explain clearly and simply what the concept of resilience refers to in ecological term: using specific, detailed examples, they analyze how ecosystems can absorb disturbances, adapt and transform, and in what ways humanity can encourage or speed up those natural processes.