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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ecological succession | 6/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_succession | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:17:58.613092+00:00 | kb-cron |
An association is not an organism, scarcely even a vegetational unit, but merely a coincidence. Gleason's ideas were, in fact, more consistent with Cowles' original thinking about succession. About Clements' distinction between primary succession and secondary succession, Cowles wrote (1911):
This classification seems not to be of fundamental value, since it separates such closely related phenomena as those of erosion and deposition, and it places together such unlike things as human agencies and the subsidence of land.
=== Eugene Odum === In 1969, Eugene Odum published The Strategy of Ecosystem Development, a paper that was highly influential to conservation and environmental restoration. Odum argued that ecological succession was an orderly progression toward a climax state where "maximum biomass and symbiotic function between organisms are maintained per unit energy flow." Odum highlighted how succession was not merely a change in the species composition of an ecosystem, but also created change in more complex attributes of the ecosystem, such as structure and nutrient cycling.
=== Modern era === A more rigorous, data-driven testing of successional models and community theory generally began with the work of Robert Whittaker and John Curtis in the 1950s and 1960s. Succession theory has since become less monolithic and more complex. J. Connell and R. Slatyer attempted a codification of successional processes by mechanism. Among British and North American ecologists, the notion of a stable climax vegetation has been largely abandoned, and successional processes have come to be seen as much less deterministic, with important roles for historical contingency and for alternate pathways in the actual development of communities. Debates continue as to the general predictability of successional dynamics and the relative importance of equilibrial vs. non-equilibrial processes. Former Harvard professor Fakhri A. Bazzaz introduced the notion of scale into the discussion, as he considered that at local or small area scale the processes are stochastic and patchy, but taking bigger regional areas into consideration, certain tendencies can not be denied. More recent definitions of succession highlight change as the central characteristic. New research techniques are greatly enhancing contemporary scientists' ability to study succession, which is now seen as neither entirely random nor entirely predictable.
== See also ==
Connell–Slatyer model of ecological succession Cyclic succession Ecological stability Intermediate disturbance hypothesis
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Science Aid: Succession Archived 2021-05-06 at the Wayback Machine Explanation of succession for high school students. Biographical sketch of Henry Chandler Cowles. Robbert Murphy sees a significantly ideological, rather than scientific, basis for the disfavour shown towards succession by the current ecological orthodoxy and seeks to reinstate succession by holistic and teleological argument.