62
Adaptive Ecosystem Assessment and Management: The Path of Last Resort?
1903 flood
CUl'n Iry,
1903-1947
No easy
answers
1971-1982
Repairing the
Everglades,
1983-presenl
Restoration?
Allison
Plan
Canals
adaptive systems. Dynamic complexity is about
pattern-qualitative properties that fix the limits of
change-and requires scientific methods of integrating and analyzing relationships among parts.
To study complex adaptive systems, we need to try
harder to understand patterns of behavior than to
explain or predict limited manifestations of them.
Faced with the difficulties of analyzing the problems of time, evolution, and complexity in systems
FIGURE 4.4. Coevolution of ecology and institutions in the Everglades.
far from equilibrium, Holling (1986) created a
thought model of change called the adaptive cycle
(Figure 4.3).
All living things go through the cycle of birth,
death, and renewal, "the revolving fund of life"
(Leopold, 1949). Holling's challenge was how to
craft a heuristic that would capture change in time,
states, and levels of complexity. As an example,
the adaptive cycle (Holling, 1995) describes the
Adaptive Ecosystem Assessment and Management: The Path of Last Resort?
1903 flood
CUl'n Iry,
1903-1947
No easy
answers
1971-1982
Repairing the
Everglades,
1983-presenl
Restoration?
Allison
Plan
Canals
adaptive systems. Dynamic complexity is about
pattern-qualitative properties that fix the limits of
change-and requires scientific methods of integrating and analyzing relationships among parts.
To study complex adaptive systems, we need to try
harder to understand patterns of behavior than to
explain or predict limited manifestations of them.
Faced with the difficulties of analyzing the problems of time, evolution, and complexity in systems
FIGURE 4.4. Coevolution of ecology and institutions in the Everglades.
far from equilibrium, Holling (1986) created a
thought model of change called the adaptive cycle
(Figure 4.3).
All living things go through the cycle of birth,
death, and renewal, "the revolving fund of life"
(Leopold, 1949). Holling's challenge was how to
craft a heuristic that would capture change in time,
states, and levels of complexity. As an example,
the adaptive cycle (Holling, 1995) describes the