I don't know if anyone really gains from speeding up the process. On the flip-side, science can benefit by watching the process play out naturally.

Here's a related article about scientists learning about water erosion on Mars by observing the island from afar: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42169466

Mostly that it ruins the opportunity to study how this happens naturally.

Also it's kinda silly. There is no shortage of natural nature.

I wouldn't say no shortage, with rainforests and forests being depleted in the tropics around the world.

we're generally not very good at environmental engineering - you wouldn't want to accidentally introduce an imbalance that caused unintended negative effects. Nature on the other hand is rather self-balancing if left alone.

Not at island preservation over long periods of time, apparently. Seems like the islands we have are explained by largely by survivorship bias

Of course nature is destructive too, but I think we overestimate how much we understand ecosystems.

From the previous article on this island, it was not expected to last this long, and now if I'm remembering correctly it's not expected to last more than 30 years. It may just be better to research what happens naturally for the time it's around.

Apparently it was only expected to survive a couple of months originally (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-14/new-tongan-volcano-be...).

If we purposefully colonized it I'd like to know if we could make it permanent. It's not very often you get the chance to restore some rain-forest without pissing somebody off, even if it is a small token effort.