PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #100: Landscape Ecology.
Presiding: T. Crist
Friday, August 9. 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Gila Meeting Room, TCC.

Fifty years of woody succession at the landscape level: an aberrant case in South Carolina, USA.

STRAW, WILLLIAM^*,1,2, ¹ Federal Emergency Management Agency, Region IV, Atlanta, GA² University of Georgia, Athens, GA

ABSTRACT- Woody succession in a 235-hectare oldfield, in South Carolina, USA, from 1951 through 2001, has been slower and has had different species frequencies and distributions than that predicted by southeastern U.S. ecological succession models. The models predicted that pines (Pinus spp.) would dominate the site after about 50 years of succession, and that mixed oaks (Quercus spp.) and hickories (Carya spp.) would replace the pines and dominate the field after about 100 to 150 years of succession. However, after 50 years of succession, only about 70 percent of the site is wooded, mostly with black cherry (Prunus serotina) and laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia), particularly in areas that were more than 200 m from the surrounding 1951—1966 field/forest edges. The models were based primarily on studies of sites covering less than 20 hectares. This and other cases of apparently aberrant woody succession suggest that ecological succession may operate differently at larger spatial scales (e.g., landscape level) than that predicted by present ecological succession theory and models. If this is true, then the ecological succession theory and models need to be revised to more accurately and realistically explain and predict ecological succession at larger spatial scales, because disturbances are occurring at increasingly larger scales, and revised models can be used to develop more effective and efficient natural resource management applications.

KEY WORDS: oldfield, succession, landscape, restoration