OPUS: Synthesizing concepts about succession, disturbances, and indicators based on long-term research at Mount St. Helens

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

Succession is the process of change of species in an ecological community over time. Understanding succession is essential to understanding how disturbances affect ecological systems. Disturbances are not viewed by ecologists as catastrophic agents of destruction but rather as normal, sometimes even integral, parts of long-term system dynamics. While disturbances can significantly impact ecosystem processes, they are seldom included in ecological studies. Yet disturbances are occurring with greater frequency and intensity than in the past. For this project, data from 40 years of monitoring permanent plots established after the catastrophic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine ecological resilience after extreme disturbance as well as secondary disturbances that have occurred since 1980. The study will build on the researcher’s documentation that resource managers and other stakeholders must have knowledge about succession, effects of disturbances, and indicators of change to plan for disturbances and thus provide long-term protection of ecological systems. The project will produce not only a scientific paper, presentations, and data sets but also a book and serious game that will provide a means for the public to learn about the forces that affect ecological changes during succession and ongoing disturbances. While succession is one of the basic concepts of ecology, theories of succession have not yet fully integrated the role of disturbances in affecting successional process nor evaluated how indicators of change can be used to improve understanding the dynamics of succession. By synthesizing information from permanent plots monitored since the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, this project will test and update a conceptual model of succession that includes effects of ongoing disturbances, the role of survivors, creation of new habitats over time, random events, and ecological filters (conditions that screen out some propagules, species, or interaction and therefore limit ecological opportunities). Topics addressed by the proposed project include how ecological conditions change over time following disturbance, what alterations in key indicators suggest for ecological recovery, and how human activities and natural disturbances influence ecological succession. The data on vegetation reestablishment, seed dispersal, and changes in soils and other environmental conditions that were collected over the 40 years since the eruption of Mount St. Helens as well as the indicators and other information resulting from this synthesis will be placed in the permanent archive at Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.