Comments on: Resilient scientists http://agro.biodiver.se/2008/04/resilient-scientists/ Crops, animals, wild relatives ... Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:30:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Garry Peterson http://agro.biodiver.se/2008/04/resilient-scientists/comment-page-1/#comment-430581 Garry Peterson Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:46:16 +0000 http://agro.biodiver.se/2008/04/resilient-scientists/#comment-430581 A lot of the resilience work has been done in regions that include agro-ecosystems, for example the Kristianstad region in Sweden, the Goulburn Broken watershed in Australia, and the Everglades in Florida. However, this work has mostly tried to understand how the entire system works, rather than the farming system per se (many of these cases are discussed in the books Panarchy and Resilience Thinking). However, one recent example of applying resilience ideas to agro-ecosystems in Tanzania is: Enfors, E., Gordon, L.J. (2007) Analysing resilience in dryland agro-ecosystems: A case study of the Makanya catchment in Tanzania over the past 50 years. Land Degradation & Development, 18(6) 680 - 696. As for how useful the workbook is, that is what the RA wants to find out, by trying out the workbook and learning how to do it better. Hopefully the wiki will be useful for this process. I know that I and other people from the Resilience Alliance are trying the book out, and we hope that others will contribute. I think that the workbook will be useful in the analysis of many different systems. For example, I have been applying it a bit to campus sustainability assessment at McGill University. From that experience I can see that some parts of it are useful and others not. I expect the same will be true for many other systems. Hopefully this type of feedback can be used to improve the workbook. A lot of the resilience work has been done in regions that include agro-ecosystems, for example the Kristianstad region in Sweden, the Goulburn Broken watershed in Australia, and the Everglades in Florida. However, this work has mostly tried to understand how the entire system works, rather than the farming system per se (many of these cases are discussed in the books Panarchy and Resilience Thinking).

However, one recent example of applying resilience ideas to agro-ecosystems in Tanzania is:

Enfors, E., Gordon, L.J. (2007) Analysing resilience in dryland agro-ecosystems: A case study of the Makanya catchment in Tanzania over the past 50 years. Land Degradation & Development, 18(6) 680 – 696.

As for how useful the workbook is, that is what the RA wants to find out, by trying out the workbook and learning how to do it better. Hopefully the wiki will be useful for this process. I know that I and other people from the Resilience Alliance are trying the book out, and we hope that others will contribute.

I think that the workbook will be useful in the analysis of many different systems. For example, I have been applying it a bit to campus sustainability assessment at McGill University. From that experience I can see that some parts of it are useful and others not. I expect the same will be true for many other systems. Hopefully this type of feedback can be used to improve the workbook.

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