Background Information – The future sustainability of natural systems and associated goods and services has become of increasing concern to society. This concern has caused a shift in both societal and scientific interests from an emphasis on productivity to a focus on resilience. The study of resilience has also stimulated a great deal of new interdisciplinary interactions because large-scale ecological systems are embedded within a socioecological context. Recently, there has been significant progress towards finding indicators of impending regime shifts in ecological systems (ESA 2009 OOS 9 – Indicators of Impending Regime Shifts). Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of resilience as a way in which socioecological systems adjust to rapid change, the practical application of the concept and efforts to quantify resilience have been limited thus far. Following up on last years session on predicting regime shifts, we propose for 2010 a session focusing on ways of staving off undesired regime shifts by understanding the mechanisms promoting resilience. Goals and Objectives – The goal we seek to advance with this session is to further the development of resilience thinking and in the process of doing so, to stimulate linkages between ecological theories and applications that are directly relevant to society. Our primary objective in this session will be to bring together a variety of perspectives on how we learn about the mechanisms that support resilience in both ecological and socioecological systems. The subject is sufficient new and expanding that we think the time is right for cross-fertilization and innovation, which will be featured in the talks making up the session. We seek to include perspectives from a variety of terrestrial and aquatic systems, as well as from ecological, urban, and social scientists.