Humans are part of many ecosystems and our activities affect all aspects of ecosystem function, including ecosystem resilience. Human activities that reduce biodiversity, exploit natural resources, pollute, change land-use and contribute to anthropogenic climate change threaten ecosystem resilience. Often these threats are interactive and their cumulative effects on ecological communities, ecosystem processes and function remain largely unknown

Understanding how humans adversely affect ecosystems, and how ecosystems respond to human activities, is vital to creating and managing healthy and sustainable ecosystems for the future. Scientists at SERC study how human activities affect ecosystem resilience, how interactive and cumulative stressors affect ecosystem health and function and how future projected environmental conditions might affect ecological communities.