"WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY"
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| "THE RED FIELD" |
"Biological Succession"
This photo is a picture of what our family has always affectionately referred to as the"Red field". This land has been in the same family for many many generations. The soil has a very red color much different than that of the surrounding soil types of the area. Now I realize that it doesn't look much like a "field" in this photo. In my memory it was once a vast corn field as large as anything you would see in the midwest.
As a young boy I vividly remember getting to take a turn guiding that old Ferguson tractor as it pulled a single bottom plow through that red dirt (I'm sure my brothers had fond memories of the same). Those corn rows stretched on for what seemed forever.
You may be wondering why I have posted a picture of a forest and am talking about it being a corn field. The word Agriculture comes from the latin Ager, meaning "field" and cultūra, meaning "cultivation or growing". Somewhere along the lines, our family decided to stop using the land for agriculture purposes and then a natural cycle took control . No more humans "tending the land" left it up to nature to take care of it. Biological sucession is the resulting process. It is the process where one wave of growth takes the place of another.
This plot of land is now a typical northeastern Alabama mixed deciduous forest. It is the product of many things that happened to it in the past. Soil, climate, geology, lumbering and farming have made it what it is today.
Natural forces continue to work to produce change. As the new
vegetation covers the scars made by man, one wave of growth sets the stage for another. Slowly the forest matures, and one kind of plant or animal replaces another in a natural cycle called succession. As succession runs its course, some elements of the present environment may not be here someday because
they won’t “fit” this place anymore. The elements of succession are very evident in the differing ecosystems that exist in the Southern landscape we call home. The study of succession remains at the core of all ecological studies.
Each of the those waves have a term that science guru's use to describe them. Pioneer (early), Intermediate, Climax, Primary, Secondary, Cyclic, Regeneration, Trophic Cascade etc. They are all just terms to describe change. The only thing that I can guarantee about this world is that everything changes. Everything is linked together. If one part changes, for whatever reason, everything else tends to have a change as well. The beauty of this system is that the earth has a tendency to follow certain rhythms and orders. That's what the study of succession is all about. It is a bit hard to appreciate the changes since they often take place over the course of many many years. Change is always happening in all forms of life. We seldom stop our busy world long enough to notice it.
A good friend tagged me in a Nat Geo Video earlier this week and I think it fits this "WW" article very well. It is about how succession can be effected by wolves. The wolves of yellow stone changed the way biological succession was going. When they were reintroduced back into the ecosystem things started changing back to a more natural state. I will post a link to this video below.
Aldo Leopold once said that "the oldest task of the human race was to live on a piece of land without spoiling it". Succession happens because of changes, natural and unnatural. The key is trying to understand how our plans are effecting the cycle.
UNTIL NEXT WEEK
BE SAFE, BE CAREFUL, BEHAVE, DON'T DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL, IMMORAL, UNETHICAL, OR JUST PLAIN STUPID
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