Resilience of ecosystems: local surprise and global change.

Presents a conceptual framework that can help focus treatment of the contrasts between global and local behavior on the one hand and between continuous and discontinuous behavior on the other. Since that framework describes different perceptions of regulation and stability behavior, it provides the necessary background for a 2nd topic, which concerns the particular causative relations and processes within ecosystems, the influence of external variation on them and their dynamic behavior in time and space. A 3rd topic synthesizes present understanding of the structure and behavior of ecosystems in a way that has considerable generality and organizational power. A 4th connects that understanding to global phenomena on the one hand and local perception and action on the other.