Pioneers break new ground and leave an empty space when they move on. Buzz Holling is considered the father of resilience research, which he called the ‘science of surprise’. In the 1960s and 1970s, he applied the systems approach to understand diverse types of interactions among people and nature.

He collaborated with experts outside of universities and research labs to understand land development, forest management, and pest management. It was from these experiences that he first began to formulate his ideas about resilience.

Buzz Holling highlighted the importance of considering surprise, system reorganization, and learning when trying to understand social-ecological dynamics. These efforts led to new ideas about the dynamic nature of resilience. His contributions include Adaptive Management and the Adaptive Cycle.

One of the talents of Buzz Holling was his ability to bring people together to understand, assess and act on new solutions to complex problems of people and nature. The Resilience Alliance, an international research organization founded in 1999, was one of his ‘experiments’.

The Resilience Alliance was set up as a flexible, nimble institution that would bring scientists, academics and practitioners together as a crucible for creating novel solutions that would contribute to sustainable futures for people and the planet. A number of influential papers and books published in the 2000s explored the dynamics of resilience and transformation, as well as the concept of social-ecological systems. This helped to mainstream resilience and social-ecological systems as central concepts in sustainability science.

Quotable Quote #1

Andrew Nikiforuk wrote Empire of the Beetle, a startling look at pine beetles and the world’s most powerful landscape changer. It was nominated for the Governor General’s award for Non-Fiction in 2011. He interviewed Buzz Holling extensively while writing the book. In a tribute published by The Tyee, he wrote that:

“Scientists tend to fall into one of three camps.They consolidate knowledge, perform great technical feats, or explore a new vision with the boldness of a Basquiat. Crawford Stanley ‘Buzz’ Holling, one of the world’s great ecologists, did all three. Every Canadian should know something about Holling, because his revolutionary work explains why ecosystems and civilizations collapse, and why our time is marked by increasing turbulence.”

Quotable Quote #2

Lance Gunderson’s interests are in the human and institutional dimensions to resource ecology. He and Buzz Holling co-authored two books. The following quote is extracted from Gunderson’s tribute titled Remembering Buzz Holling. and published by Ecology and Society Journal:

“(He) saw the value in applying historical information to recognize and explain patterns of change. Buzz embraced the uncertainty of the future, as indicated by his recognition of inherent complexity and unpredictability of the future, now manifest in the manifold resilience programs and the adoption of adaptive management throughout the world. As we are now in the second or third generation of resilience scientists and practitioners, this provides us with the hope that his intellectual legacy will survive for years to come. One of Buzz’s legacies is his adaptive cycle. Buzz’s life was indeed a series of adaptive cycles.”

“My first contact with Buzz Holling was in 1999,” recalled Kim Stephens, Executive Director, Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia.

“An assignment for King County allowed me to delve into the origins of adaptive management, and research experience around the world. Specifically, we were looking for a local government precedent, and there was none. This led me to phone Buzz. A decade later, in 2010, it was an inspirational experience when we met and had a reflective conversation at a UBC symposium on resilience planning.”

How will communities ‘get it right’ as land develops and redevelops?  

“In 1999, my Aha Moment was realizing that our cross-border response to the ‘salmon crisis’ in the Pacific Northwest paralleled the efforts of Buzz Holling and Lance Gunderson related to Florida Everglades Restoration,” continued Kim Stephens.

“They were great communicators, they used imagery to translate the science so that folks could understand it, and they undertook a workshop program that informed, educated and inspired government action.

“In the late 1990s, Bill Derry (founding Chair, Washington State Stormwater Managers Committee) and I led a workshop program for B.C. local government, and provided cross-border sharing of the latest Puget Sound research. Early access to the research findings allowed us to create what became known as the ‘fish pictures’.”

‘Reconnect hydrology and ecology’ and improve where we live:

“The workshop program led to the SmartStorm Forum Series during the period 1999-2001. In turn, the series provided the impetus and springboard for Stormwater Planning: A Guidebook for British Columbia.

“Inspired by Buzz Holling, the Guidebook established an international precedent for application of an adaptive management approach in the local government setting. The Guidebook developed the ADAPT guiding principles for reconnecting hydrology and ecology through use of Water Balance performance targets.”