Vegetation Dynamics (Succession and Climax) in Relation to Plant Community Management

An understanding of vegetation dynamics is basic to the mantpdation of plant communities. Traditional successionlclimax concepts can often hinder rather than aid in sound vegetation management. In interpreting vegetation change, a diverse set of factors is often operative. Certain of these—initial floristic composition and the tolerance, facilitation, and inhibition models—are specifically related to the basic processes involved in vegetation or biotic change and to specific management problems. For example, certain shrublands within forested regions can exhibit remarkable resistance to tree invasion, a phenomenon especially relevant in managing rights‐of‐way, naturalistic landscape areas, and wildlife habitats and in maintaining landscape diversity. Fire and herbicides are also important management tools in the restoration and perpetuation of certain community types. Because natural disturbances are critical in maintaining landscape diversity, tfie incorporation of natural areas should be apart of every land‐use management plan. Because wetlands are pulsed systems, succession and climax concepts are often of limited usefulness, that is, wetland vegetation belting is often erroneously interpreted as succession. Considering the diverse interpretations of these traditional concepts, a new paradigm is needed To give a more holistic view of biotic or ecosystem change, the appellations vegetational or biotic development are proposed to replace succession, and steady state and relative stability are offered as more realistic terms than climax.