Diversity, Stability, and Ecosystem Function

One pervasive idea in a lot of ecosystem management has been that the more diverse an ecosystem is, the more stable it will be. I should point out right now that even though I’ll be raising some substantial doubts about simple formulations of this belief and how useful it is for conservation purposes, it’s not an unreasonable notion. It was, after all, first formalized This is, of course, an aspect of plan development that will rely heavily on the expertise of social scientists. It does, after all, involve studying people and social systems, not wild plants and animals. If you don’t know what you want to conserve, you’ll probably conserve something else. We’ll talk more about both of these ideas when we get to adaptive management in a couple of weeks.