Did Mayan civilization collapse? Did it just go through a major change? Or did the Maya hit their resilience threshold which caused them to stop building elaborate cities, among other things? Whatever this process is defined as, we can say that the Maya moved away from those cities, broke up large trade routes, and ceased to function as a massive, unified network of trading partners. If you approach this situation like many past scholars, it’s a total collapse of society. The resilient Mayan society failed to maintain the golden standard of a vast and prosperous civilization. The Romans also suffered a fall from glory after centuries of growth and adaptation. The end of the Roman Empire plunged the entirety of Western Europe into the Dark Ages. If we look at large-scale, hierarchical societies in decline it seems at first that a loss of resilience might equal total failure—as the word collapse suggests—but there is more to it than meets the eye.
The Course of Empire Destruction (1836), by Thomas Cole. Source: Wikipedia.
Resilience is about absorbing small stresses without disrupting the overall stability of a system; however as the Maya, the Romans, and modern day climate change all suggest, the resiliency threshold will be crossed at some point. Nothing in nature can stay in a state of permanent stasis. Many people believe that resilience is the end goal because it is supposed to keep a system intact in the face of change, but crossing the threshold and shifting to a different state is an essential part of the system. Nothing lasts forever, and even when sweeping change involves entire societies or the climate, it may still all be part of a larger, adaptive system, known as panarchy (Gunderson and Holling 2002).
Fig. 1. The adaptive cycle (Holling 1986); temporal changes in a system proceed through phases of growth (r), conservation (k), release (Ω), and reorganization (α). The adaptive cycle is an effective model for systems, the levels in a panarchy, and the dynamics of individual systems. Source: Cambridge University Press.
In panarchy, a shift from the stable state to an additional state is the first step in a continual process of rejuvenation, creation, and growth. The system is a perpetual cycle that draws from adaptive resilience and places it into a larger context. While the cycle is perpetual, adaptation and resilience depend on a variety of circumstances. The theories of resilience and panarchy are applicable to many disciplines and some have argued that they also apply to change in human societies. The panarchy idea was developed in ecology, first as an adaptive cycle, so I will explain panarchy in that context. A good example is the growth of forests over time. Start in the “r” or growth phase of panarchy, where a variety of species grow in a forest over time. This growth eventually reaches a fairly stable, resilient state, where the levels of trees and other plants even out at a sustainable point.
This would be the conservation or “K” phase of the cycle, where trees and plants die at a natural rate, and are replaced by others like them at a steady interval. Even with a stable ecosystem, there are stressors. Too many new animals in the ecosystem, altering seed levels, or dead flora that can’t decompose fast enough to provide nutrients to the new plants trying to grow. Under such stress, the system may appear stable, but will become brittle and move closer to the threshold where a shift occurs. That shift could be brought on by any number of scenarios such as virulent disease, logging, fire, etc. All of these would be viewed as terribly destructive processes by humans, who might believe there is no good that can come from these situations; but in reality only logging would be quite so damaging to the forest ecosystem, depending on the circumstances.
Wildfire in New York State. http://www.erh.noaa.gov/okx/pics/firewx1.jpg
Natural “disasters” like disease or fire are actually part of the cycle and fall into the release or “Ω” phase of the system. This means that all of the potential that has been accumulating in the conservation phase is suddenly available for use. A fire is a type of threshold trigger, and by burning up many of the species in the forest, it is clearing dead fauna, releasing nutrients back into the soil, and helping to disperse seeds quickly. With all of these formerly trapped resources now available, the forest will enter the “α” or reorganization phase, and new plants— ones particularly suited to survive the fire conditions— will begin to grow, which starts the cycle all over again. This new growth is the same building-up process as the first time the system ran its course, but the fire caused a change in the type of plants that are growing. The forest may still reach a stable state through new plant growth; it’s just not exactly the same as the one before.
Image of an area reaching a new stable state ten years after a forest fire. Source: Oregon State University.
The U.S. Forest Service has an entire division that deals with managing the resilience of forest ecosystems in relation to serious stressors, like fire. The system they employ is one that actually pulls inspiration from the natural cycle just described, and it allows humans to help maintain a healthy forest. This theory of management within a natural adaptive cycle can be applied to many areas outside of ecology, and the NSF grant (Cyber-Enabled Understanding of Complexity in Socio-Ecological Systems Using Computational Thinking) we are working on is one such area. Many important leaders in the discussion involving climate change are trying to find ways to keep societies and the climate in their current state. If efforts made today follow this path, then societies the world over will only become more brittle and increasingly subject to environmental disasters, rather than capable of finding the resilient adaptations we seek.
The same adaptive cycles that produce panarchy over time as applied to ecological and social systems can also apply to ideas. Panarchy can be used to develop adaptive management strategies for socio-environmental problems in the near future. Source.
Societies, like a forest, can’t just stay in one state forever because the resources available won’t match the needs of the inhabitants. This is already the reality facing many societies all over the world, and by examining how these theories work, our current NSF-funded project hopes to better understand how people deal with climate change, and how they might continue to do so in the future. Climate change and continued population growth are going to have strong impacts on resource availability on a local, national, and global scale, so now is the time to develop adaptive management strategies for use in the near future. By looking to how past societies adjusted to changes of all kinds in their worlds, and how a particular ecosystem regulates itself, there is a chance to find solutions to the brittleness of many modern day societies in the face of climate change.
~Maggie Mariani, Research Contractor. Editor: Meghan Mulkerin
Works cited
Cascio, Jamais. “Resilience in the Face of Crisis: Why the Future Will Be Flexible.” Fast Company, 1 April 2009. Web. 4 Dec. 2012. < http://www.fastcompany.com/1257825/resilience-face-crisis-why-future-will-be-flexible.>
Gunderson, Lance H., and C. S. Holling (editors). 2002. Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, DC.
Resilience Alliance and Santa Fe Institute. 2004. Thresholds and alternate states in ecological and social-ecological systems. Resilience Alliance. (Online.) 6 Nov. 2012.URL: <http://www.resalliance.org/index.php?id=183.