When speaking of species, this mostly refers to the Red List category Vulnerable. The criteria when a species is assessed as vulnerable is often based on the international accepted categories of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN see also http://www.iucnredlist.org).

Thanks, Geert -

The red list concept combines value and vulnerability, when considering population size and trends, combined with habitat loss. But a land bird is not very vulnerable to a oil spill on sea, even though it is redlisted. I am looking for articles (or other kinds of works) combining the different aspects i relation to each other (value - vulnerability - impact - risk, over individuals - populations - systems).

I am working with a focus on the arctic, but conseptually, that doesn't matter.

There is a lot of literature on vulnerability in the context of the social sciences, e.g. when it comes to exposure of human communities to natural hazards (UNU-EHS in Bonn does a lot of work on this). In ecology, the term is mostly rather weakly defined. In terms of ecological communities and ecosystem it is sometimes used as the inverse of resilience (also a concept with many different meanings, however). You might look e.g at Adger 2006, Global Envirnomental Change 16, 268-281, or to Villagrán de León 2006: Vulnerability (published by UNU-EHS). With respect to biological conservation, Wilson et al. 2005, Environmental Management 35, 527-43, might be a starting point.

Taking up Kurt's thread, I'd like to add this source: S.B. Manyena, 2006, Disasters 30(4): 433−450; this gives a good overview of the conceptual differences between vulnerability and resilience and also provides a valuable table explaining different definitions of vulnerabiltity. However, it might be difficult to transfer these to conservation.

Thanks to Kurt Jax and Thomas Döring for valuable links. The tables in Manyena illustrates really well the diversity of vulnerability definitions. I have got some reading to do.

Fish species which has slow growth, late maturity, and low natural mortality can be called highly vulnerable to fishing and this results in slow rebuilding if they become depleted from overfishing.

So then they are vulnerable because of a specific threat, and the intrinsic long recovery time. But this is not static. What is the recovering time for increasing populations then, compared to decreasing populations, after an "incident" of overfishing? Could we say that the state of the population influences the vulnerability?

In terms of food webs, vulnerability is often defined as number of predators species/linkage density.

In my risk assessment work (mostly for marine mammals and noise), I like to use the definitions provided by Zacharias & Gregr (2005): "We define sensitivity as the degree to which marine features respond to stresses, which are deviations of environmental conditions beyond the expected range. Vulnerability can then be defined as the probability that a feature will be exposed to a stress to which it is sensitive." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00148.x/abstract

Dear Systad

I think It is very complicated to judge on the recovery time because it is affected by different parameters, some of them are pertinent to the biological characteristics of the fish, such as fecundity, growth rate, natural mortality, ecological parameters such as aggregation behavior (easily targeted by fishermen) or how commercially valuable the species is and so on. It is necessary to take into account all these factors which contribute to the overall vulnerability of the species.

Dear Alabsi

I agree. Life history strategies, aggregation, avoidance and so on are important aspects of vulnerability. And all has to be taken into account.

What is the present state of vulnerability research and how does it link with the fields of climate change adaptation and resilience look at Adger, W.N., 2006. Vulnerability. Global Environmental Change.

Thank you, Giovanni -

Agree. Adger 2006 is good, and Wilson et al 2005 is good on definitions.

Your question in answer to Natheer Alabsi:Could we say that the state of the population influences the vulnerability?

Answer to that is:More the numbers,more is the probability of these fish to be caught.That is because,in natural ecosystems of fish,roughly 50% of the fish gets captured by natural predators. The rest is available for fishing mortality.

2X plants of seaweeds release conchospores when the light intensity,daytime & temperature,all the three of them are at almost specific values,over & above these values,conchospores are not released & hence they are vulnerable- resulting in either late sporulation or loss of consequent vegetative plants.

If the plants germinate at a later time,then the associated fauna of the weeds could result in smaller numbers,or if unable to shift to other weeds,could lead to total loss from the system.Hence,the above 3 physical factors of nature-has a cascading effect on the flora & fauna associated with the system.