Ecological robustness and multiple scales

Robustness of ecosystem properties and services may be of great interest to humanity, but natural selection is concerned more about processes at lower levels of organization.  Indeed, there is potential conflict between achieving robustness at lower levels and sustaining ecosystems, since macroscopic robustness depends upon microscopic adaptability.  This lecture will explore these tradeoffs, both in ecosystems and in the socio-economic systems in which management is embedded.