Robustness

*An ecosystem’s ability to adapt to or maintain its function under chronic exogenous drivers and pressures. An ecosystem is robust when it is capable of resisting changes caused by long-term drivers or pressures that are external to the ecosystem, such as global warming, nutrient loading or hunting pressure. Robust ecosystems demonstrate adaptability to external forces, for example if a keystone species goes extinct, surviving species can compensate for the loss of function over physiological, demographic, or evolutionary time scales.