Zaburzenia w ekosystemach leśnych ; Large-scale natural disturbances in forest ecosystems: their distribution, character and role in forest dynamics
Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Ekologii
Oficyna Wydawnicza Instytut Ekologii PAN
Pages 3-19 ; 24 cm ; Bibliographical references (pages 15-18) ; Abstract in English
Disturbance is any relatively discrete event in time that disrupts ecosystem, community, or population structure and changes resource or substrate availability or the physical environmenL Natural disturbances span a wide rangę of spatial scales; in this paper only the role of large-scale natural disturbances (of size larger than 1 ha) is considered. For a long time forest ecosystems had been roughly divided into two large groups; the one where natural disturbances are frequent, but smali (like canopy gaps of various sizes) and the one where natural disturbances are rare, but cover large areas and lead to almost complete elimination of the tree layer (like large fires, hurricanes, landslides etc.). The forest ecosystems influenced by frequent smali disturbances were considered to be very close to a climax State: forest dynamics in the other group was considered a "catastrophic” one, with forest ecosystems regenerating slowly through consecutive stages of forest succession.However, it is important to notę that those ideas were developed many decades ago, when most of the forest ecosystem research was concentrated in forests of the temperate zonę, strongly influenced by human management. The spatial extent of those studies used to be very limited by the smali size of the remaining patches of relatively natural forests, and even the longest observation or measurement series were still relatively short when compared to the time-scale of forest dynamics.During the last few decades, the geography of forest research has changed substantially; morę research is now being conducted in tropical and subtropical forests of South America, Southeast Asia and Africa. Methods of forest investigations have changed, too; the widespread use of satellite image analysis contributes to the expanding of the spatial scalę of research, while the accumulation of results of paleoecological research leads to the extention of the temporal scalę of analyses. Ali that combined yielded new, interesting results, which largely challenged the asssumptions underlying the earlier concepts of forest dynamics.
oai:rcin.org.pl:219586 ; 0013-2969
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Creative Commons Attribution BY 3.0 PL license
Copyright-protected material. [CC BY 3.0 PL] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY 3.0 PL license, full text available at: ; -
Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Library of the Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Feb 4, 2022
Oct 25, 2021
556
https://rcin.org.pl./publication/172663
Szwagrzyk, Jerzy
Szwagrzyk, Jerzy
Kaczka, Ryszard J. Czajka, Barbara Łajczak, Adam Szwagrzyk, Jerzy Nicia, Paweł
Symonides, Ewa
Holeksa, Jan
Dąbrowska-Prot, Eliza
Aulak, Władysław