The resilience of many global ecosystems is currently being tested, perhaps more than at any point in the last few millennia due to a range of multidimensional pressures. Many of these are human related, and appear to have accelerated in recent decades, since the ‘Great Acceleration’. But ecosystems have previously undergone, and survived, glacial/interglacial cycles. In this session we explore what makes ecosystems resilient to external stressors, how and why they can tip into alternative states, and perhaps most importantly, how they can recover. We welcome studies across all temporal scales – from Quaternary ecosystem fluctuations and how they can display resilience (or not), to more contemporary ecosystems and how they are coping (or not) with human/environmental stressors. What can we learn from the past, to help us better manage our ecosystems into the future? What are the pathways to recovery and how can we best navigate them?