Program: ‘Green Compound walls and Terrace Garden’ Civic Entrepreneurial Initiative supporting ‘Joy Street Management’

Ecological resilience is the ability of an ecosystem to respond to some kind of disturbance - a measure of how quickly it recovers. These disturbances can be both natural and human. Fires, floods, storms, droughts, disease outbreaks, sudden introduction of new species, or sudden population explosion of current species are natural impacts that can be studied in terms of resilience. But human impacts like climate change, deforestation, oil extraction, toxic chemicals, and introducing exotic plant or animal species are also part of measuring resilience.

Human Impacts on Resilience
While resilience isn't specifically about human impacts, it's the huge impact humans are having which motivates a lot of the study on the topic, because there are many of them.

Climate change is the increase in the average global temperature, and all the effects that result from this. We currently believe that humans have caused unusually rapid climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Climate resilience looks at how an ecosystem can adapt, reorganize and evolve to sustain the system as the climate changes. Evolution can be slow, and so the current climate change trends along with other human impacts are causing mass extinctions.

Deforestation is the cutting down of trees, usually for human activities like farming or building. Deforestation can cause climatic conditions in the local area to change all on its own, and has huge effects on reducing biodiversity. Generally forests are able to recover 10% of their area without too much difficulty. They do this simply by spreading their seeds into the deforested area. But the larger the affected the area, the harder it becomes.