An Integrative Approach to Successional Dynamics: Tempo and Mode of Vegetation Change

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.

Scott J. Meiners is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences of Eastern Illinois University where he teaches Plant Ecology, Introductory Botany and a graduate course in biostatistics. His research interests focus on the dynamics of regenerating communities using forest, grassland and successional systems, as well as the dynamics of stream fish communities and sustainable agriculture. Since 2001, he has led the Buell–Small Succession Study, the longest continuous study of post-agricultural vegetation dynamics.

Steward T. A. Pickett, a Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in Millbrook, New York, is an expert in the ecology of plants, vegetation dynamics, and natural disturbance. His contributions to succession are in the realm of both theory and empirical, mechanistic studies. He also directs the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term Ecological Research program. He has edited and authored books on ecological heterogeneity, humans as components of ecosystems, conservation, the linkage of ecology and urban design, the philosophy of ecology, and ecological ethics.

Mary L. Cadenasso is a Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. She received a National Science Foundation Career award and was recently named a Chancellor's Fellow. Her research interests span landscape, ecosystem, and plant ecology and focus on determining how the spatial heterogeneity of a system is linked to ecosystem functions and change of that system. Her work has been widely published in more than 50 peer reviewed journal articles, 25 book chapters and two books.