Three and half years ago a massive volcanic eruption buried the Aleutian island of Kasatochi under thick layers of sediment and ash. That destroyed the nesting sites of millions of seabirds and completely reshaped the island’s topography. As UAF's Ned Rozell reported last week, new research shows that unusually fast erosion is revitalizing Kasatochi’s ecosystem and giving scientists a glimpse into how damaged environments heal themselves.

“Vegetation is starting to come back in little refugia on the island," says geologist Chris Waythomas.  "Insects are getting in there.  Bird species are using it.  So the biological productivity in general has been kind of surprising… that things kick in this fast.”

Waythomas says it’s not often that scientists get the chance to watch the rebirth of a disturbed environment.

"You could pick your disturbance process – construction of a dam, or a coal mine or whatever – you know, that’s a big question: how long might it take naturally for Nature to return this landscape back to what it might be.  And so here we’re having an opportunity to document this.  And I think we’ve been kind of surprised by how fast things have happened.”

One of the big reasons for the rapid re-colonization of the island is unusually fast erosion.

“We’ve documented rates of 140 – 100 meters per year of erosion.  The highest other published rates in Alaska are closer to 20 meters per year.  So this is considerably greater than that.”

With no vegetation to hold the ground in place, a single Bering Sea storm can remove huge quantities of sediment, exposing habitat underneath.  Waythomas says that as a result, someday the island will probably look a lot like it did before the eruption.  But in the meantime, he says species are making do with the modified landscape.

“It may take decades before anything resembling continuous vegetation cover is there, but as far as the habitability for the traditional organisms that were there – I think that’s going to start to return pretty quickly.”

Waythomas and colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service will be visiting Kasatochi again this summer to collect more data about the island and its rebirth.

View a time-lapse video of the erosion here.