雅思阅读

📖 Reading Passage

The concept of 'ecological resilience' has gained prominence in environmental science, referring to an ecosystem's capacity to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks. Unlike the traditional notion of stability, which assumes a single equilibrium state, resilience acknowledges multiple stable states and the potential for abrupt shifts between them. For instance, a shallow lake may exist in a clear-water state with abundant vegetation or shift to a turbid, algae-dominated state due to nutrient overload. Once the shift occurs, returning to the original state often requires significantly greater effort than preventing the shift, a phenomenon known as hysteresis. This understanding challenges conventional management approaches that focus on optimizing for one preferred state, instead advocating for strategies that maintain diversity and adaptability.