Rapid Biodiversity Assessment: Biodiversity assessment protocol that facilitates rapid survey work and classification. This assessment approach generally employs a multidisciplinary team that includes field scientists and local experts. The team surveys component groups that represent biological diversity in a given area in order to detect change. The benefits of this approach include rapid collection and classification of organisms into recognizable taxonomic units (RTUs), and usefulness for certain types of assessment (monitoring, impact assessment, recovery, and comparison of diversity). The shortcomings of the approach relate to limited information collected on particular species and difficulty of comparison between studies because of lack of standard protocols. This approach includes taxonomic, non-taxonomic, and surrogate approaches. Among the non-taxonomic approaches, the most common are the use of semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, production of timelines, and ranking and seasonal calendars with local populations. The most common surrogate approaches are sampling surrogacy (restrictive sampling rather than intensive sampling), species surrogacy (higher taxonomic levels than species); taxonomic surrogacy (use of recognizable taxonomic units used by non-specialists); and surrogate taxa in place of all taxa (taxon-focusing) (Ward and Lavirière 2004:151)1 [CGM]

Resilience: Ecological resilience is the amount of disturbance that an ecosystem can withstand without changing self-organized processes and structures (defined as alternative stable states). It has also been defined as a return time to a stable state following a perturbation. A new term, adaptive capacity, has recently been introduced to describe the processes that modify ecological resilience. The presence of multiple stable states (or stability domains), and hence resilience is the property that mediates transition among these states. In transitions between states, ecological resilience is maintained by keystone structuring processes across a number of scales, sources of renewal and reformation, and functional biodiversity. [CAM] Resilience is the adaptive capacity of a system to withstand unexpected disturbances and surprises. [GEW

Resource management: The term refers to the use of renewable and non renewable resources while considering both the needs of people and the conservation of the resource base for future sustainability. [CAM]