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

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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 >1000 protected area ecosystems in Africa to disturbance-induced losses in primary productivity from 2000 to 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 optimized random forest models that use ecosystem attributes (representing their climatic and environmental conditions, plant and faunal biodiversity, and exposure to human impacts) to predict their resistance and, separately, stability values. We visualized each attribute’s relationship with resistance and stability after accounting for all other attributes in the model framework. Ecosystems that are more resistant to disturbances are less stable, and vice versa. The ecosystem attributes with the most predictive power in our models all exhibit contrasting relationships with resistance versus stability. Notably, highly resistant ecosystems are generally more arid and exhibit high habitat heterogeneity and mammalian biodiversity, while highly stable ecosystems are the opposite. We discuss the underlying mechanisms through which these attributes engender resistance or, conversely, stability. Our findings suggest that resistance and stability are fundamentally opposing phenomena. A balance between the two must be struck if ecosystems are to maintain their identity, structure, and function in the face of environmental change.