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Ecological Disturbance

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An ecological disturbance is a temporary disruption in the environment resulting from abiotic, biotic, or anthropogenic factors, causing a pronounced change in an ecosystem. The impact of an ecological disturbance, which can depend on its intensity, frequency, and spatial distribution, plays a significant role in shaping the species diversity within the ecosystem.

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Measures of species biodiversity, such as richness (i.e., the number of species present) and evenness (i.e., their relative abundance), describe an ecological community’s structure. Many factors affect community structure, including abiotic factors (e.g., sunlight and nutrients), disturbances (e.g., fire or flood), species interactions (e.g., predation or competition), and chance events (e.g., foreign species invasion). Certain species—such as keystone species—also play a pivotal role in the...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 29, 2026

Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging

Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging

Published on: April 18, 2025

Chaos in easter island ecology.

¹Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706-1390, USA. sprott@physics.wisc.edu

Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences

|September 22, 2011

Summary

A new dynamical model for Easter Island

Area of Science:

Ecological dynamics
Mathematical modeling
Complex systems

Background:

Easter Island's ecological history is complex.
Previous models may not fully capture population dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

To analyze a proposed dynamical model for Easter Island's ecology.
To identify previously unreported behaviors within the model.

Main Methods:

Dynamical systems analysis
Attractor identification

Main Results:

The model admits periodic and chaotic attractors.
These behaviors were not previously reported for this model.

Conclusions:

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Simple models can generate complex, realistic ecological behavior.
The findings may apply to general ecosystem population dynamics.