Week 22: How promising is it?

This week the focus of work is resilience -- how it is defined, how to measure, and what use it has.  It seems that resilience is no longer a vague concept with meanings little more than a metaphor like in 2005 when I first looked at it.  There are models and applications emerging, and the theory itself is also developing.  What is especially interest is that resilience seems to be most applied in rangeland management.  A bliss for my project?  Maybe.  However I must remember that there are numerous differences between Western rangeland and those pastures in Tibet.
I have encountered a number of approaches to using resilience assessment.  They all seem to make some sense.  The question is which one is more adequate and practical.  An ideal approach for this project would be utilising less variables, but all important slow variables are addressed.

One thing is of no doubt necessary for the assessment: I will need to know the ecological and socioeconomic processes and develop a conceptual model.  Then perhaps some math can kick in and some equations denoting the system can be derived.