Also know as ecological integrity, this topic is used to refer to symptoms of an ecosystem's pending loss of carrying capacity, its ability to perform nature's services, or a pending ecocide, due to cumulative causes such as pollution. The term is intended to evoke human environmental sustainability concerns, which are often closely related (but as a part of medicine not ecology).

Some practices such as organic farming, sustainable forestry, natural landscaping, wild gardening or precision agriculture, sometimes combined into sustainable agriculture, are thought to improve or at least not to degrade this situation, while still keeping land usable for human purposes. This is difficult to investigate as part of ecology, but is increasingly part of discourse on agricultural economics.

Deforestation and the loss of deep-sea coral reef habitat are two issues that prompt deep investigation of what makes for environmental sustainability and fuels a great many debates. The role of clearcuts, plantations and trawler nets is often portrayed as negative in the extreme, held akin to the role of weapons on human life.