Resilience indicators measure the extent to which the health of ecosystems can be sustained under human and environmental pressures. In turn, this relates to their capacity to continue to deliver benefits.
Resilience is a property which allows an ecosystem to maintain its characteristics under the impacts of human impacts. These may be either positive, such as habitat restoration, or negative, such as climate change or deliberate or accidental introduction of invasive non-native species.
The pressures that drive these indicators are changing more quickly than ever before, whether from it climate change, colonisation by invasive non-native species or damage to soils. Policy makers need to be able to see the extent and location of change to act.
Equally, they need to see evidence of effective restoration when it happens. As citizens, we can all use these indicators to see what is happening in our communities and across Scotland as a whole.
While many of the pressures that harm our ecosystems are of human origin, people have the power to help. These indicators can be used to target habitat restoration work or the removal of invasive species. The Species Action Framework Handbook gives a range of examples of such projects.
Because of the way the information is presented, we hope that communities and landowners can use it to help them to work in partnership to help our ecosystems. Previous successful projects of this kind include working to manage habitat for the marsh fritillary butterfly in Argyll and the intermediate wintergreen in the Cairngorms.
This page was updated on 20 Nov 2019
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