The surprising strength and location of last month's Fukushima earthquake highlighted how poorly seismologists can predict when the ground is about to shake cataclysmically. Unfortunately, ecologists can't do much better at forecasting when an ecosystem is about to collapse or change dramatically. But now a team of ecologists has shown that it is possible to detect early distress signals in a lake that foretell a major disruption to its ecology. If researchers could identify similar signals in other ecosystems, they might one day predict, and perhaps even prevent, ecological meltdowns.
Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/04/an-early-warning-sign-for-ecosystem.html?rss=1 
