Disturbed Equilibrium Theory and Index for Anticipating Ecosystem Collapse and Renewal
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Environmental crises—ranging from shrinking lakes and land subsidence to coral bleaching and floods—are increasingly recognized as systemic reactions of ecosystems to persistent human and climatic pressures. Yet, existing frameworks such as Resilience Theory and Panarchy remain largely descriptive, lacking predictive or operational tools to quantify when ecosystems cross critical thresholds. This study introduces the Disturbed Equilibrium Theory (DET) and its operational metric, the Disturbed Equilibrium Index (DEI) , which model and quantify ecosystem transitions from dynamic balance to collapse or renewal. DEI integrates Human Pressure (H) , Exogenous Stress (A) , and Resilience (R) into a single diagnostic function:
