Book contents
- Comparative Plant Succession among Terrestrial Biomes of the World
- Ecology, Biodiversity, and Conservation
- Comparative Plant Succession among Terrestrial Biomes of the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Plant Succession and Biomes
- Part II Succession by Disturbance Type
- Part III Synthesis
- Book part
- References
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2020
- Comparative Plant Succession among Terrestrial Biomes of the World
- Ecology, Biodiversity, and Conservation
- Comparative Plant Succession among Terrestrial Biomes of the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Plant Succession and Biomes
- Part II Succession by Disturbance Type
- Part III Synthesis
- Book part
- References
- Index
Summary
Plant succession is the replacement of plant species and communities over time in response to a disturbance of either natural or human origin. It is a unifying concept of ecology, integrating temporal and spatial scales, abiotic and biotic disturbances, plant-soil and plant-animal interactions, plant life histories, biodiversity patterns, species interactions, and other fundamental ecological principles across a heterogeneous landscape. While we have a simple, intuitive grasp that plant communities change (e.g., abandoned pastures change to forests; vegetation recovers following damaged by fire), the actual drivers of such change are not fully understood, even after more than a century of formal study (Clements, 1916; Glenn-Lewin et al., 1992; Meiners et al., 2015a). One of the challenges is that most work on plant succession (henceforth “succession” because of the preponderance of plant-focused studies; but see heterotrophic succession, Walker & del Moral, 2003) has been specific to a given site or type of disturbance. Yet progress has been made in identifying certain ecological principles that are likely to be important in succession. In this book, we explore global-scale patterns of several key aspects of plant succession to discern at what level generalizations about succession are possible. For the first time, we systematically compare terrestrial successional processes following all major disturbances among all the world’s biomes. This synthesis also provides a framework for aiding land managers attempting to manipulate succession through restoration (Prach & Walker, 2011).
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020