page_title: Ecosynthesis
section_title: Trophic cascade
hierarchical_section_title: Ecosynthesis / Trophic cascade
caption_attribution_description: Photo credit: USFWS/John &amp; Karen Hollingsworth
context_page_description: Ecosynthesis is the use of introduced species to fill niches in a disrupted environment, with the aim of increasing the speed of ecological restoration. This decreases the amount of physical damage done in a disrupted landscape. An example is using willow in a stream corridor for sediment and phosphorus capture. It aims to aid ecological restoration, the practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and action. Humans use ecosynthesis to make environments more suitable for life, through restoration ecology
context_section_description: A clear example of humans ecosynthesiszing would be through the introduction of a species to cause a trophic cascade, which is the result of indirect effects between nonadjacent trophic levels in a food chain or food web, such as the top predator in a food chain and a plant. The most famous example of a trophic cascade is that of the introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, which had extradionary effects to the ecosystem. Yellowstone had a massive population of elk because they had no predators, which caused the local aspen population and other vegetation to significantly decrease in population size. However, the introduction of wolves controlled the elk population and indirectly affected the aspen and other vegetation, bringing the ecosystem back to sustainability.
caption: Gray wolf in YellowStone National Park
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