Africa’s ecosystems exhibit a tradeoff between resistance and stability following disturbances

Environmental disturbances may prevent ecosystems from consistently performing their critical ecological functions. Two important properties of ecosystems are their resistance and stability, which respectively reflect their capacities to withstand and recover from disturbance events (e.g., droughts, wildfires, pests, etc.). Theory suggests that resistant and stable ecosystems possess opposing characteristics, but this has seldom been established across diverse ecosystem attributes or broad spatial scales. Here, we compare the resistance and stability of >1,000 protected area ecosystems in Africa to disturbance-induced losses in primary productivity from 2000-2019. We quantitatively evaluated each ecosystem such that following disturbances, an ecosystem is more resistant if it experiences lower-magnitude losses in productivity, and more stable if it returns more rapidly to pre-disturbance productivity levels. To compare the characteristics of resistant versus stable ecosystems, we opt..., ,