Premium
Plant Biomass and Productivity of Prairie, Savanna, Oakwood, and Maize Field Ecosystems in Central Minnesota
Author(s) -
Ovington J. D.,
Haitkamp Dale,
Lawrence Donald B.
Publication year - 1963
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.2307/1933180
Subject(s) - productivity , biomass (ecology) , citation , library science , ecosystem , ecology , geography , history , biology , computer science , economics , macroeconomics
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Ecological Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ecology. slowly through the more open savanna woodlands. The dense exotic scrub communities, however, constitute the greatest fire hazard. Cover stratification diagrams show the general lack of a dense, complete ground cover of low vegetation under savanna woodlands and also indicate the much denser tree canopy and well defined shrub understory of sclerophyll forests. The "stringybark" tree stratum of sclerophyll forests is defoliated but not greatly affected by fire and recovers rapidly by growth from adventi-tious lateral shoots. In contradistinction, the indigenous shrub stratum of these forests is destroyed by fire and undergoes a well-defined though rapid seral development from fire-razed condition to climax vegetation in 7-10 years. Five definite stages can be recognized in the sclerophyll forest pyric sere, limited, however, to the understory only. Exotic vegetation is generally killed by bushfires, but exotic scrub regrowth, particularly of broom and gorse, is vigorous, dense, and very rapid. The climax communities are not changed by fire, succession being a rapid process. However, if the indigenous vegetation is disturbed by cultivation, vigorous, exotic, scrub growth can replace the slower growing, less dense, indigenous scrub forms. INTRODUCTION Cedar Creek Natural History Area is situated 50 km (30 mi) north of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, and is about 1,620 hectares (4,000 acres) in area. In view of its nearness to these urban centers, the influence of the early settlers and their successors has been surprisingly small. The first white settlers arrived in 1856 and found a patchwork vegetation reflecting in part the effects of burning by Indians (Pierce 1954). Settlement by the European pioneers was never very intensive , probably because of the infertility of the sand and peat soils, so that many fields staked out by the early settlers were soon abandoned, in some cases after only one crop had been planted and failed. The wooded areas were selectively logged, particularly for white pine, Pinus strobus, and no doubt burning and forest destruction frequently followed logging but usually natural regeneration restored some form of tree cover. Eventually, …