In a new paper, Scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation within the human dimensions of global environmental change, Marco Janssen and others have analyzed the networks of co-authorships and citation among research on resilience, vulnerability, and adaptation in human dimensions of global change research. They analyzed co-authorship and citations among 2286 publications between 1967 and 2005 (3860 unique authors and 10,286 co-authors).

Janssen et al identified the most central scholars, publications, and journals in the knowledge domains of resilience, vulnerability and adaptation.

Figure 2 Co-author network of most productive and best connected authors with the strongest co-authorship relations. Circles denote author nodes and are labeled by the authors’ last name and first initials. The larger the node, the more publications. The darker the node, the more the co-authors. Black nodes refer to 50 or more co-authors, while white nodes refer to less than 10 co-authors. Edges represent co-authorship relations. The width of an edge represents the relative number of co-author relationships (Janssen et al 2006).

Janssen et al found that the number of publications in all domains increased rapidly between 1995 and 2005, while co-authorship increased from 1.5 authors to 2.5 authors per paper between the 1970s and early 2000s. Despite this increase in number of publications and co-authorship, the resilience knowledge domain is only weakly connected with the other two domains. However, overall there is an increasing number of cross citations and papers contributing to multiple knowledge domains.

The complete database of papers can be analyzed online, on Marco Janssen’s website. However, because this is the Resilience Science weblog, I’ve an image showing the citation network among the most cited papers on resilience (in human dimensions of global change) is shown below. Size corresponds to the number of citations.


Most Cited Papers in Resilience Domain (from Janssen et al)

Arrow, K., Bolin, B., Costanza, R., Dasgupta, P., Folke, C., Holling, C.S., Jansson, B.O., Levin, S., Ma¨ ler, K.G., Perrings, C., Pimentel, D., 1995. Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment. Science 268 (5210), 520–521.

Berkes, F., Folke, C. (Eds.), 1998. Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, C. (Eds.), 2003. Navigating Socialecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Carpenter, S.R., Ludwig, D., Brock, W.A., 1999. Management of eutrophication for lakes subject to potentially irreversible change. Ecological Applications 9 (3), 751–771.

Carpenter, S.R., Walker, B.H., Anderies, J.M., Abel, N., 2001. From metaphor to measurement: resilience of what to what? Ecosystems 4 (8), 765–781.

Friedel, M.H., 1991. Range condition assessment and the concept of thresholds—a viewpoint. Journal of Range Management 44 (5), 422–426.

Gunderson, L.H., Holling, C.S. (Eds.), 2002. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Island Press. Gunderson, L.H., Holling, C.S., Light, S.S. (Eds.), 1995. Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions. Columbia University Press, New York, NY.

Holling, C.S., 1973. Resilience and stability of ecological systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4, 1–23.

Holling, C.S., 1986. The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems: local surprise and global change. In: Clark, W.C., Munn, R.E. (Eds.), Sustainable Development of the Biosphere. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 292–317.

Holling, C.S., 1992. Cross-scale morphology, geometry, and dynamics of ecosystems. Ecological Monographs 62 (4), 447–502.

Holling, C.S., Meffe, G.K., 1996. Command and control and the pathology of natural resource management. Conservation Biology 10 (2), 328–337.

Ludwig, D., Jones, D.D., Holling, C.S., 1978. Qualitative-analysis of insect outbreak systems—Spruce Budworm and Forest. Journal of Animal Ecology 47 (1), 315–332.

May, R.M., 1977. Thresholds and breakpoints in ecosystems with a multiplicity of stable states. Nature 269, 471–477. McCarthy, J.J., Canziani, O.F., Leary, N.A., Dokken, D.

Peterson, G.D., Allen, C.R., Holling, C.S., 1998. Ecological resilience, biodiversity, and scale. Ecosystems 1 (1), 6–18.

Pimm, S.L., 1984. The complexity and stability of ecosystems. Nature 307 (26), 321–326.

Scheffer, M., Carpenter, S.R., Foley, J.A., Folke, C., Walker, B.H., 2001. Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. Nature 413, 591–596.

Walker, B.H., Ludwig, D., Holling, C.S., Peterman, R.M., 1981. Stability of semi-arid savanna grazing systems. Journal of Ecology 69 (2), 473–498.

Walters, C.J., Holling, C.S., 1990. Large-scale management experiments and learning by doing. Ecology 71 (6), 2060–2068.

Westoby, M., Walker, B.H., Noymeir, I., 1989. Opportunistic management for rangelands not at equilibrium. Journal of Range Management 42 (4), 266–274.