An Integrative Approach to Successional Dynamics

This book synthesises fifty years of vegetation dynamics using innovative analyses and an organized framework to integrate perspectives on succession.

Aimed at students and scholars interested in vegetation dynamics, this book presents over fifty years of data collected as part of the historic Buell–Small Succession Study using innovative analyses and approaches. A unifying conceptual framework organizes the treatment, resulting in a strategy applicable to any complex dynamic system.Much of what is considered conventional wisdom about succession is not as clear cut as it is generally believed. Yet, the importance of succession in ecology is undisputed since it offers a real insight into the dynamics and structure of all plant communities. Part monograph and part conceptual treatise, An Integrative Approach to Successional Dynamics presents a unifying conceptual framework for dynamic plant communities and uses a unique long-term data set to explore the utility of that framework. The fourteen chapters, each written in a nontechnical style and accompanied by numerous illustrations and examples, cover diverse aspects of succession, including community, population and disturbance dynamics, diversity, community assembly, heterogeneity, functional ecology and biological invasion. This unique text will be a great source of reference for researchers and graduate students in ecology and plant biology, as well as others with an interest in the subject.