Resilience, the capacity to lead a continued existence by incorporating change, stresses the importance of assuming change and explaining stability, instead of assuming stability and explaining change. A framework, under development, for assessing and exploring resilience at regional scales will be presented.

About Dr. Brian Walker
Dr. Brian Walker works at Sustainable Ecosystems, CSIRO, Australia, Program Director of the Resilience Alliance, and Chairman of the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics.

Dr Walker was Chief of CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology from 1985 to 1999. He chaired the International Decade of the Tropics Program on Responses of Savannas to Stress and Disturbance from 1984 to 1990, and the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) Project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) from 1989 to 1998.

His expertise is in ecosystem function and dynamics, with particular knowledge of tropical savannas and rangelands. He is the recipient of a number of awards, most recently the Ecological Society of Australia's Gold Medal for 1999. He has co-authored one book, edited 6 books, written over 120 scientific papers and is on the editorial boards of five international journals.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.