"KersPlatte goes the River? How social and ecological resilience might save the Platte River Watershed"

Although several frameworks for assessing the resilience of social-ecological systems have been developed, some practitioners may not have sufficient time and information to conduct extensive resilience assessments. We present a simplified approach to resilience assessment that reviews the scientific, historical, and social literature to rate the resilience of a social-ecological system in respect to nine resilience properties proposed by Walker and Salt (2006): ecological variability, diversity, modularity, acknowledgement of slow variables, tight feedbacks, social capital, innovation, overlap in governance, and ecosystem services. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of two large-scale projects, the construction of a major dam and the implementation of an ecosystem recovery program, on the resilience of the central Platte River social-ecological system, located in the state of Nebraska, United States. We use this case study to identify the strengths and weaknesses of applying a simplified approach to resilience assessment.