In ecology, resilience is the ability of an ecosystem to recover from or resist any permanent change to its structure and function after a disturbance. This can be considered at small or large scales, for example the recovery of a patch of sand where a ray has eaten all of the shellfish, or the ability of an extensive mangrove forest to resist storm damage. Diverse, intact, healthy ecosystems are more resilient than degraded, fragmented, unhealthy ones.