Exploring Links Among Ecological, Social and Personal Resilience (2022-2023)
As coastal hazards increase in intensity and frequency, the need for coastal resilience — the ability to withstand or adjust to stressors — is increasing faster than ever. Fostering coastal resilience must incorporate strategies to support ecological, social and personal resilience.
Environmental literacy aligns well with these aims, as it includes an understanding of socioecological systems, skills for engaging in environmental solutions, and dispositions necessary for motivating action, at both individual and community scales. Community-based restoration is an ideal context for embedding environmental literacy in efforts that will improve ecological resilience, bring communities together and provide individual agency to strengthen personal resilience.
This project team explored the links among the concepts of ecological, social and personal resilience as they might relate to ecological restoration. Throughout the year, they conducted a deep dive into resilience literature to understand and identify historical knowledge gaps. Team members then developed a roadmap for how ecological restoration can be used to build personal and community resilience by enhancing optimism, social networks, adaptive learning and more.
The project team produced a toolkit for restoration practitioners and community members to enhance community resilience through ecological restoration. Team members also began work on a peer-reviewed publication that sets the conceptual grounding for thinking about restoration and community resilience.
Timing
Fall 2022 – Spring 2023
Team Outputs
Community Resilience Through Ecological Restoration (2023 Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Virtual Showcase)
Exploring Links Among Ecological, Social and Personal Resilience (poster by Abigail Bromberger, Olivia Hayward, India Mackinson, Sydney Mantell, Rory McCollum, Anne Roderer, Finnie Zhao, Liz DeMattia and Carter Smith, presented at Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, Duke University, April 19, 2023)
Toolkit on community resilience
Reflection
This Team in the News
Meet the Members of the 2023-2024 Student Advisory Council
Meet the Members of the 2022-2023 Student Advisory Council
Meet the Winners of the 2023 Bass Connections Student Research Awards
Image: Sunrise at the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, NC, by Jared Lazarus