Succession Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Eve ry plant and animal species has a set of environmental conditions under which it will grow and reproduce most optimally. When the conditions are changed, the previously dominant species may fail and another species may become ascendant. This gradual and continuous replacement of plant and animal species by other species until eventually the community, as a whole, is replaced by another type of community is called succession. In other words, succession is the natural replacement of plant or animal species, or species associations, in an area over time. The replacement is often directional and sometimes predictable.

Successions are of two types: Primary and secondary. When the process of succession begins on a site not previously occupied by other communities, it is called primary succession. Newly formed sand dunes, volcanic ash, bare mineral soil, new islands, and bare rock surfaces are examples of such sites. The first group of plants to become established on such sites is called the pioneer community. Succession on sites in which vegetation existed before is called secondary succession. Examples of sites for secondary succession include newly ploughed agricultural fields, forest clearcut sites, shifting cultivation fallows, and fire-burn areas. Succession can also occur in fresh water and marine environments.

There are four main stages in succession, including invasion, early seral, late seral, and mature or climax. Each stage of succession creates the conditions for the next stage. During the process, temporary plant communities are replaced by more stable communities until a sort of equilibrium is reached between the plants and the environment. The stable end product of the successional sequence is called the “climax” community. The rate of succession at various stages is mainly dependent upon the type and degree of disturbance and the physical environment (climate and soil).

Successions result from the impacts established species have upon their own environments. Succession may also occur when the conditions of an environment suddenly and drastically change due to natural (such as fire, a windstorm, pests) or human-caused (such as agriculture and forest management activities) disturbance that alters the composition of communities and ecosystems and changes the physical environment and resources availability. These factors may also destroy species and thus alter the dynamics of the ecological community, triggering a scramble for dominance among the species still present.

Ecological succession is one of the most important concepts in natural resources management. The fact that nature is always changing is critical in appreciating management systems and natural processes. Successions are important in altering species diversity and maintaining the ecosystem. Secondary succession plays an important role in reestablishing destroyed ecosystems. Species richness and community stability generally increase as succession proceeds after disturbance but frequent and massive disturbances often lead to low levels of species diversity.

Understanding forest succession is very important when making forest management prescriptions. Plant species that occur in the early and late stages of the successional process have distinctly different growth rates, morphology, longevity, composition, and structure. These differences have tremendous impact on net primary productivity. Knowledge of succession, therefore, helps us form appropriate forest management strategies that provide for society’s needs while maintaining healthy, sustainable ecosystems. For example, in some sites we can maximize the economic benefits by harvesting timber at the end of fast-growing period rather than waiting for the forest to reach its maturity. On some other sites it is often easier to work with the natural progression and maintain one of the late successional stages than it is to maintain an early stage. The progressive change in forest types also has a huge impact on the complement of wildlife species and understory plant species that live there. The forest type will also influence soil development, erosion potential, soil pH, organic matter volume, water retention, water quality, and similar forest characteristics. Successional sequence therefore presents possibilities and opportunities to forest managers.

Succession also has incredible time and monetary cost effects on humans. For example, the energy input by a farmer to control growth of weeds following the preparation of soil for planting is directly proportional to the energy inherent in the force of ecological succession. If we extrapolate this very small-scale scenario to all of the agricultural fields and systems on earth and visualize all of the activities of all of the farmers, we begin to get an idea of the immense cost in terms of time, fuel, herbicides, and pesticides that humans pay every growing season because of the force of ecological succession.

Bibliography:

B. Bush, Ecology of a Changing Planet, 2nd ed. (Prentice Hall, 2000);
P.W. Richards, The Tropical Rain Forest, 2nd (Cambridge University Press, 1996).