Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Future Directions
Ecological succession has a complex and controversy rich history. It is significant
over this history that the importance of successional knowledge as a prerequisite to
the wise management of landscapes has not been a point of issue. The debates in
succession are not about its importance. Rather, the debates were and are over how
succession works, how it should be understood, and how it can be wisely applied.
This is all the more so in the case of sustainability science as a user of successional
theory and succession concepts. To sustainably manage the planet, it is an absolute
prerequisite to have a capability to predict the dynamic change of the world's
vegetation. To the extent that the understanding of succession and vegetation
dynamics is not complete, so too will be the state of the understanding of sustain-
able management.
Ecological models of vegetation dynamics have developed to a great degree
over the past several decades. The capability to predict change in vegetation is
much more today as it was 50 years ago. At the same time, the novel and large
environmental changes that humankind is visiting upon the biosphere (changes in
the gasses of the atmosphere, in the diversity of regions, in the local to global
climate, etc.) conspire to challenge models to predict outside the range
of conditions in which they were developed. Extrapolation is always a difficult
endeavor for life scientists.
One would expect sustainability scientists to become more dependent on models
when conditions are novel. This novelty conspires to make models potentially less
reliable. Sustainability has a word origin in the word, Nachhaltigkeit. That legacy
grew into modern forestry with a quantitative capability to predict the future changes
of forests under active management. In some senses, however, forestry with its
emphasis on single-species, even-aged forest stands has developed the simple case
and provided an example of howmuch effort it takes to develop such the simple case.
The task of understanding the complex cases of natural ecosystems in the face of
novel conditions is both daunting and essential. The real challenges to sustainability
science is the development of meaningful policies and protocols when the essentials,
such as succession theory, are themselves changing with new discovery.
Bibliography
Primary Literature
1. Clements FE (1916) Plant succession: an analysis of the development of vegetation. Carnegie
Institute, Washington, DC, Publication no 242
2. Clements FE (1928) Plant succession and indicators. Wilson, New York
3. Clements FE (1936) Nature and structure of the climax. J Ecol 24:252-284
4. McCune B, Grace JB, Urban DL (2002) Analysis of ecological communities. MjM Software
Design, Gledenon, 304 pp
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