Disturbance Ecology and Mechanisms Be sure to read and study assigned material. It will expand much of this synthesis. Ecosystems are not static entities. Indeed, one could argue that ecosytems are in a continual state of change and stasis is unusual. They may be biotic or abiotic.
Disturbance is any event that disrupts an ecosystem.
A disturbance event may be internal or external. Furthermore, disturbances may act singly on individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems or combinations thereof, or the total system at once. Disturbance may remove organisms, change resource availability, open gaps for colonization, or change ecosystem structure. Disturbance is often a random, or stochastic, event. It may also be seasonal, such as monsoon cycles.