Measures of four components of resilience are developed and used to quantify the response of coastal sage scrub to fire in southern California: (1) elasticity (rate of recovery following disturbance), ( 2) amplitude (threshold of disturbance beyond which recovery to the original state no longer occurs), (3) malleability (extent of alteration of the new stable-state from the original) and ( 4) damping (extent and duration of oscillation in an ecosystem parameter following disturbance). Vegetation and soil properties measured before fire, and for the first 5 -6 yr after fire on four coastal (Venturan association) and four inland (Riversidian association) sites of coastal sage were used to follow changes. In addition, results from a simulation model of postfire succession in Venturan coastal sage scrub (the FINICS model of Malanson) were used to examine resilience behavior over a 200 yr period. Resilience behavior of coastal sage scrub is critically influenced by the presence of a competitive mix of inherently strongly and weakly resprouting species. Sites dominated by weak resprouters exhibit lower elasticity and less damping of year-to-year fluctuations in composition in the early post-fire years. Sites with a mixture of weak and strong resprouters have a lower threshold of disturbance (amplitude) before species extirpation occurs, a result intensified by a higher frequency of disturbance. Malleability is also greater in these systems under higher disturbance frequency.