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Shiro TSUYUZAKI
Plant community ecology / Environmental conservation

Mount Usu / Sarobetsu post-mined peatland
From left: Crater basin in 1986 and 2006. Cottongrass / Daylily

(Update on Nov. 10 2003. Revised on June 2 2009)

(Plant) community

Contents

plant community ecology
community

problems

ecotone

Plant community ecology 植物群集生態学

Objectives: analyses of pattern and process on plant community

Pattern: spatial, temporal, niche patterns, species along gradients, community in landscape
Process: succession → site index, competition, biotic reaction、disturbance

The nature of plant community (vegetation)

Uniquity of change in time - patchy dynamics
Vegetation in space: vegetation is never separated from the ground surface

Community

Japanese = 群集、群落

The organisms which affect, directly or indirectly, the expected reprocutive success of a reference organism. By a "true" community is meant one whose member individuals interact, either directly or through a chain of other individuals, in a way that effects their individual life times and chances of reproduction and survival. (MacMahon et al. 1981)

A group of populations of all organisms that coexist in a space and time. The species may interact to each other.

Plant community

A plant subset of community; viz. all plants coexist in a space and time.

Vegetation (and phytocoenosis)

I use as the synonym of 'plant community' in my lecture.

Reference: Phytosociological term
Association: a particular plant community type that can be determined by the characteristics of species composition, physiognomy and environments

See also, 'biome' and 'ecosystem'


Problems
  1. How do we recognize plant communities?
    Clementsian paradim, Gleasonian apporach, and the synthesis
    Ecotone
  2. How do we draw the boundary of two communities?

Criteria for plant community analysis
  1. Flora
    Species composition
  2. Plant community physiognomy
    (Percentage) cover
    Basal area
    Density
    Frequency
  3. Distribution correlated with environment

see 'Abundance'

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Ecotone

A transitional area between two adjacent (plant) communitites
Transition zone between two major ecological communities where one does not merge gradually into the other, for example that between grassland and woodland. Such steep gradients between communities are often man-made (see 'skislope').

The development of ecotone is tightly connected with the environmental gradient.

References
Links for vegetation in various regions
References
Quiz
  1. List several distinctly different non-seral shrub-dominated community types and several herb-dominated community types. For each, state the environmental factor or factors that permit these growth forms to dominate and to persist.
  2. Distinguish between subalpine and alpine meadows. For each, describe three major associations.

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