Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Succession that begins in new habitats, uninfluenced by pre-existing communities, is called primary succession, whereas succession that follows disruption of a pre-existing community is called secondary succession. [1] Primary succession may happen after a lava flow or the emergence of a new island from the ocean.
One example of primary succession takes place after a volcano has erupted. The lava flows into the ocean and hardens into new land. The resulting barren land is first colonized by pioneer organisms, like algae, which pave the way for later, less hardy plants, such as hardwood trees, by facilitating pedogenesis, especially through the biotic acceleration of weathering and the addition of ...
Secondary succession is the secondary ecological succession of a plant's life. As opposed to the first, primary succession, secondary succession is a process started by an event (e.g. forest fire, harvesting, hurricane, etc.) that reduces an already established ecosystem (e.g. a forest or a wheat field) to a smaller population of species, and as such secondary succession occurs on preexisting ...
Pioneer species play an important role in creating soil in primary succession, and stabilizing soil and nutrients in secondary succession. [2] For humans, because pioneer species quickly occupy disrupted spaces they are sometimes treated as weeds or nuisance wildlife, such as the common dandelion or stinging nettle.
Autogenic succession can be viewed as a secondary succession because of pre-existing plant life. [6] A 2000 case study in the journal Oecologia tested the hypothesis that areas with high plant diversity could suppress weed growth more effectively than those with lower plant diversity.
For example, we can examine succession in the Loess Plateau in China. In the graph on page 995 of the paper "Plant Traits and Soil Chemical Variables During a Secondary Vegetation Succession in Abandoned Fields on the Loess Plateau" by Wang (2002), we can see the initial dominance of the Artemisia scoparia, the pioneer species.
Seral communities in secondary succession can be seen in a recently logged coniferous forest. During the first two years, grasses, heaths and herbaceous plants such as fireweed will be abundant. After a few more years shrubs will start to appear; and about six to eight years after clearing, the area is likely to be crowded with young birches ...
Many studies have been conducted on old field succession, the process by which fields slowly grow back into forests over many years. While there are two types of succession, primary and secondary, secondary succession is what we think about when considering old fields. These processes may be cyclic or seral depending on the system dynamics and ...