Environmental Systems and Societies · Case studies
ECS.4 — St Matthew Island reindeer (population overshoot)
Environmental Systems and Societies · SL / HL · syllabus-mapped notes
Overview
29 reindeer put on a remote Bering Sea island exploded to thousands, then crashed to near-zero in one winter: the classic overshoot experiment.
Systems and sustainability angle
Exponential J-curve growth on a closed island with no predators, overshooting a lowered carrying capacity into a boom-and-bust collapse.
The mechanism and lessons
Why the population overshot and crashed, what the data show, and what it teaches about limits and human populations.
HL lens angle
The economics of a closed common-pool resource and the ethics of overshoot as a warning for human population and consumption.