A succession of theories: purging redundancy from disturbance theory

Abstract

The topics of succession and post-disturbance ecosystem recovery have a long and convoluted history. There is extensive redundancy within this body of theory, which has resulted in confusion, and the links among theories have not been adequately drawn. This review aims to distil the unique ideas from the array of theory related to ecosystem change in response to disturbance. This will help to reduce redundancy, and improve communication and understanding between researchers. We first outline the broad range of concepts that have developed over the past century to describe community change in response to disturbance. The body of work spans overlapping succession concepts presented by Clements in 1916, Egler in 1954, and Connell and Slatyer in 1977. Other theories describing community change include state and transition models, biological legacy theory, and the application of functional traits to predict responses to disturbance. Second, we identify areas of overlap of these theories, in addition to highlighting the conceptual and taxonomic limitations of each. In aligning each of these theories with one another, the limited scope and relative inflexibility of some theories becomes apparent, and redundancy becomes explicit. We identify a set of unique concepts to describe the range of mechanisms driving ecosystem responses to disturbance. We present a schematic model of our proposed synthesis which brings together the range of unique mechanisms that were identified in our review. The model describes five main mechanisms of transition away from a post-disturbance community: (i) pulse events with rapid state shifts; (ii) stochastic community drift; (iii) facilitation; (iv) competition; and (v) the influence of the initial composition of a post-disturbance community. In addition, stabilising processes such as biological legacies, inhibition or continuing disturbance may prevent a transition between community types. Integrating these six mechanisms with the functional trait approach is likely to improve the predictive capacity of disturbance theory. Finally, we complement our discussion of theory with a case study which emphasises that many post-disturbance theories apply simultaneously to the same ecosystem. Using the well-studied mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests of south-eastern Australia, we illustrate phenomena that align with six of the theories described in our model of rationalised disturbance theory. We encourage further work to improve our schematic model, increase coverage of disturbance-related theory, and to show how the model may link to, or integrate with, other domains of ecological theory.

Assessment of Land Use-Cover Changes and Successional Stages of Vegetation in the Natural Protected Area Altas Cumbres, Northeastern Mexico, Using Landsat Satellite Imagery

“…The process of secondary succession in vegetal communities is characterized by a modification of vegetation, subsequent to a disturbance [65][66][67], and in the absence of new changes, the disturbed areas over time may present and recover attributes similar to those of the original areas [68]. Despite the fact that the successional process is not always unidirectional and can follow different routes [67,69] and operate according to different causes [70], for this study we considered the secondary succession only as the process of recovery of vegetation [66], without taking into account the route or factors that caused it.…”

“…Despite the fact that the successional process is not always unidirectional and can follow different routes [67,69] and operate according to different causes [70], for this study we considered the secondary succession only as the process of recovery of vegetation [66], without taking into account the route or factors that caused it. Therefore, for this purpose, those areas with modified land cover (for example crops and urban areas), without vegetation (bare soil areas), or characterized by fast-grow pioneer species (grasslands, sparse or dense herbaceous vegetation, among others) were selected as disturbance areas or primary successional stages.…”

“…In summary, this provides ecological evidence for the transition processes considered in our study, in which Scrub vegetation and other categories may precede both Tropical vegetation and Temperate forests in the succession. However, the process of secondary succession is widely recognized as nonlinear [67,69,71], and areas with similar environmental constraints and disturbance conditions, despite being closer to each other, could exhibit very distinct successional trajectories [80]. We try to overcome this drawback by including both categories of Tropical vegetation-Temperate forests and Scrub vegetation without linear succession, in which we include areas with transitions between different vegetation communities.…”

Mimosa scabrella BENTH. (FABACEAE) ENHANCES THE RESTORATION IN COAL MINING AREAS IN THE ATLANTIC RAINFOREST

“…Methodologies for the restoration of these areas have been subject to wide-ranging debate, namely the challenge between technical restoration and spontaneous succession. Such a debate paves the way to the assessment of the biological diversity, taking into account the idiosyncrasies of the different biotypes in affected areas (SALEK, 2012;PULSFORD et al, 2016). Prach and Hobbs (2008), referring to restoration in disturbed areas and addressing the question about spontaneous succession versus technical restoration, related that technical restoration is required where both environmental stress and productivity are high and where clear abiotic thresholds are apparent; otherwise spontaneous succession is preferred.…”

A metapopulation model with Markovian landscape dynamics

“…A related but more subtle problem is that all two-state Markov chains, like those used to model landscape dynamics in the above papers, are reversible in the sense that the process appears the same when time is reversed [30, section 1.2]. The process of landscape succession following disturbance typically proceeds through a number of stages in a fixed order [51]. This is inconsistent with reversibility since for a reversible Markov chain any path which ultimately returns to the starting state must have the same probability regardless of whether this is traced in one direction or the other [30, section 1.5].…”