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Journal of Ecosystem & Ecography | ISSN: 2157-7625 | Volume 8
July 11-12, 2018 | Toronto, Canada
International Conference on
Environmental Microbiology & Microbial Ecology
International Conference on
Ecology, Ecosystems & Conservation Biology
&
A model for the ecological collapse of easter island caused by economic price fixing
William F Basener
1
and
Wesley J Basener
2
1
Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
2
Piedmont Valley Community College, USA
E
aster Island, called Rapa Nui by its inhabitants, is an extremely isolated population, ideally suited for study as an ecosystem
in isolation. Archeological evidence suggests that an initial group of around 50 people arrived on the island around 400
AD, at which time the island had an abundant supply of large palm trees supporting a vibrant ecosystem. The population
grew in size and sophistication, creating the enormous and artistically complex statues for which the island is famous. By
the 1700s, when the island was visited by explorers, the island was devoid of trees and the population seemed too small and
poorly equipped to have built the statues. There have been many proposed 'causes' for the boom and crash of this population,
including ecocide, genocide, and invasive species. In this presentation, we review some of the previous models and propose an
ecological economics model showing that if the price of trees were effectively fixed, then the supply and demand interactions
could have caused a boom in population, complete exhaustion of the trees, and subsequent collapse of the population.
Biography
Wesley Basener is a student researcher at the Piedmont Valley Community College. His areas of expertise include population modeling, population genetics,
topology, data mining, and dynamical systems.
wjb2146@email.vccs.eduWilliam F Basener et al., J Ecosys Ecograph 2018, Volume 8
DOI: 10.4172/2157-7625-C3-038