Plant Succession - edizione con copertina flessibile

Excerpt from Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation

The present book constitutes the general part of a monograph on Rocky Mountain vegetation which has been under way since 1899. It is hoped that another volume dealing with the details of the development and structure of the climax formations of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Great Basin may appear subsequently. The general principles advanced here are an outgrowth of the treatment in the "Development and Structure of Vegetation" (1904) and "Research Methods in Ecology" (1905), in which an endeavor to organize the whole field of present-day succession was made for the first time. The studies of the past decade have confirmed and broadened the original concepts, and have led irresistibly to the conclusion that they are of universal application. The summer of 1913 and the spring and summer of 1914 were spent in testing both principles and processes throughout the vegetation of the western half of the continent. The area scrutinized extends from the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast and from the Canadian Rockies to the Mexican boundary. The great climax formations of this region were traversed repeatedly, and their development and relations subjected to critical analysis and comparison.

As a consequence, it is felt that the earlier concept of the formation as a complex organism with a characteristic development and structure in harmony with a particular habitat is not only fully justified, but that it also represents the only complete and adequate view of vegetation. This concept has been broadened and definitized by the recognition of the developmental unity of the habitat. As a result, formation and habitat are regarded as the two inseparable phases of a development which terminates in a climax controlled by climate. Hence, the basic climax community is taken to be the formation, which exhibits seral or developmental stages as well as climax units. It is hardly necessary to point out that this places the study of vegetation upon a purely developmental basis, which is as objective as it is definite.

The recognition of development as the cause and explanation of all existing climax formations forced the conclusion that all vegetation has been developmentally related; in short, that every climax formation has its phylogeny as well as its ontogeny. This led at once to the further assumption that the processes or functions of vegetation to-day must have been essentially those of the geological past, and that the successional principles and processes seen in existing seres hold equally well for the analysis of each eosere. As a consequence, it has been possible to sketch in bold outline the succession of plant populations in the various eras and periods, and to organize in tentative fashion the new field of paleo-ecology.

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