Implications from the Buell‐Small Succession Study for vegetation restoration

. Succession is relevant to restoration because managers have to prevent, enhance or replace natural vegetation dynamics. Features of a permanent plot study of post‐agricultural succession in central New Jersey, USA, illustrate important implications of vegetation dynamics for restoration. In the past, such implications had to be drawn from chronosequences and coarse resolution studies, neither of which exposes the local contingencies relevant to site specific restoration. However, the fine scale and continuous nature of the current study reveal that succession is highly contingent on historical and local spatial heterogeneity. For example, the absence of one generally expected dominant stage, the demise of shrubs without replacement by later successional tree species, and the long and multimodal persistence of individual species suggest that neither the relay floristic or initial floristic models of succession is adequate to guide restoration. At the local scale, volleys of species appear through the succession, and reflect spatial contingencies such as neighboring vegetation and edge relationships, and patchy behavior of different functional groups. The role of introduced species and of plant consumers are additional sources of local contingency. These local and time‐specific behaviors in the vegetation are the patterns that restorationists must understand either to choose appropriate reference states, to prevent unexpected local dynamics, or to design interventions that are appropriate to the specific site of interests.