After in a forest fire: ecology changes after 1 year (left) and after 2 years (right)
Ecological succession, is the process by which a specific ecology has more or less orderly and predictably changed after a disturbance like a fire.[1] In long-term studies, there is a species succession process in the way forests develop.[2]
Several scientists are prominent in the history of this process theory:
Adolphe Dureau de la Malle was the first to use of the word succession. He described the process of re-growth after trees in a forest had been cut down.
Henry David Thoreau described succession in an Oak-Pine forest in "The Succession of Forest Trees" in 1859.
Henry Chandler Cowles developed a formal concept of plant growth succession. His work was based on studies of sand dunes in Danish by Eugen Warming. Cowles proposed the term sere. This is a repeatable sequence of changes which are identified in specific environmental circumstances.[3]
↑Connell, Joseph and R. O. Slatyer. (1977). "Mechanisms of succession in natural communities and their role in community stability and organization," The American Naturalist, Vol. 111, Issue 982, pp. 1119–44.
