Ecosystem collapse- The importance of regular monitoring

I was fascinated to read in today’s Science daily about ecosystem collapse and how regular monitoring can be used to predict the collapses.

An experiment in Peter Lake, in Wisconsin, US headed by Dr Stephen Carpenter has come up with the finding that ecosystem collapses could be predicted with the right type of monitoring. 


Researchers changed the structure of the food web in Peter Lake, by introducing a predatory fish.

In the food web of the lake insects such as fleas ate tiny water-borne plants, small fish such as golden shiners ate the fleas, and much bigger largemouth bass ate the little fish.

In a matter of three years, the introduced fish was running all over the place. This produced a decline in tiny water plants and an explosion of water fleas.

Sensing the threat from the new predators, the golden shiners of the lake began to spend more time in the shallows. They also went in for shelter under floating logs. Larger fleas moved in and started eating the phytoplankton. Wildly varying numbers of fleas and phytoplankton were seen at different times.

After a series of flip flops by late 2010, the ecosystem appeared to have stabilised its transition from one stable state to another.

The researchers say the change was preceded by signals that could be used to predict similar collapses elsewhere. This is the first time that this phenomenon has been demonstrated experimentally.

The researchers add that that isolating these signals from the ecosystem is not only useful for predicting environmental catastrophes, but they can also be used to determine which habitats are most likely to respond to conservation