Have you ever wondered how the beautiful Hawaiian Islands transformed from barren volcanic rocks to magnificent green islands full of forests, animals and insects? It all happened through a complex process called Ecological Succession, in which organisms gradually populate newly created or changed lands, such as the volcanic Hawaiian Islands. Ecological succession is one of the forces that shapes the Hawaiian Islands and allows them to thrive. The Hawaiian Islands were created by lava flows from volcanoes. The Earth is made up of tectonic plates that are constantly moving. Sometimes, magma rises up the center of a plate until it erupts onto the sea floor, forming a hot spot. This creates volcanoes, and those volcanoes grow to rise above sea level and create volcanic islands. This process is how all of the Hawaiian Islands were created. Even though the hot spot itself isn't moving, the tectonic plate it sits on is moving, and so the continued shifting creates many small volcanic islands along the way. This fact is demonstrated in an article from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, “as the plate moved over the hot spot, the series of islands that make up the Hawaiian island chain formed” (“How did the Hawaiian Islands form?” ). The Hawaiian Islands archipelago contains a total of 132 islands, coral reefs and seamounts spanning over 1,500 miles, caused by the movement of the Pacific Plate. This movement carries the plate northwestward at a speed of 5-10 cm/year, creating a large difference in time. The Hawaiian hotspot is currently located beneath the largest Hawaiian island, Big Island, which is made up of a total of 5 volcanoes. One of them, Mauna Loa, is known as the largest active volcano on Earth. ... half of the paper ... is about a growing population of non-native species, which in turn could pose a threat to the number of native species populations on the islands in the years to come. Zimmermann et al. described that “island forests appear to be in balance between two opposing factors,” meaning that native and non-native plants compete for space in their common ecosystem (1). The Hawaiian volcanic islands first formed through volcanoes that arose from the Hawaiian hotspot on the sea floor of the Pacific Plate. The organisms then populated the area through a long process called Primary Ecological Succession, which transformed the islands into beautiful, verdant ecosystems. Because disturbances, both natural and human-caused, constantly affect these ecosystems, secondary ecological succession is in perpetual use to allow the Hawaiian Islands to thrive..