A stability landscape is a mathematical model representing the various stable and unstable states that a system (such as an ecosystem) may occupy.

Ecosystem feedback is the effect that change in one part of an ecosystem has on another and how this effect then feeds back to affect the source of the change inducing more or less of it.

Regime shifts are large, abrupt, systemic changes in the structure and function of a system.

An ecological network is a map of the interaction between the biotic(and possibly abiotic) elements of an ecosystem, the classical example being a food web which is a network capturing the trophic interactions between the various species.

The name Anthropocene is a combination of the Greek root "anthropo" meaning "human" and "cene" meaning "new."

Industrial ecology has arisen over the past few decades as the study to coupled environmental and industrial systems, offering a systems-based approach to modelling, designing and managing industrial systems in relation to the natural environment.

A socio-ecological system is a type of complex adaptive system composed of two primary subdomains, a human society and economy on the one hand and a biological ecology on the other.

Adaptive capacity is the capacity of a socio-ecological system to respond to change of some kind, by generating the appropriate response.

Sustainability science is a new academic discipline that draws on many previous insights and methods from environmental science, ecology, geology

Earth systems science is the interdisciplinary study of Earth as a complex system composed of multiple physical and biological processes that interact within cycles or spheres to give rise to the overall state of the earth as an entirety.