Ecological Succession Activity
1: How is primary succession different from secondary succession?
Primary Succession involves the establishment of a community of a barren habitat and secondary succession involves the reestablishment of a community in an area that has been disturbed.
2: What impact do humans have on succession?
Suspending succession in one phase or another or by causing an event that restarts the succesion cycle, such as forest fires
Forest Primary Succession:
http://techalive.mtu.edu/meec/demo/PrimarySuccession.html
3: What causes this primary succession? List at least two other examples of primary succession you can think of.
The cause of this primary succession is the glacier melts, lava flow coving a landscape.
4: What are the 1st species to arrive after the succession event?
The first species to arrive after succession event are lichens and mosses
5: How does the rate of secondary succession compare to primary succession? Why do they differ? Explain.
Both successions take along time to form back. Primary takes close to thousands of years because it starts in an area that has been completely destroyed. Secondary takes close to hundreds of years because it starts in an area that has been destroyed by natural disaster, burning, or another reason that destroyed the area but it still has soil.
Secondary Succession:
8: Fire is one cause of secondary succession. List at least 4 other examples of secondary succession.
The renewal of a crop after harvesting, a volcanic eruption, renewal after diseases, a forest renews after logging
9: Imagine a lawn on campus or in someone’s yard. Are there any examples of succession there now? If no one maintained it for five years, what might it look like? What would it look like after 10 years? 50? 100?
No because we maintain the lawn by cutting the grass, removing weeds and fertilizing it. If not maintained, the grass and weeds will grow larger, or the grass would die out from not being taken care of. At 10 years the shrub would start to grow then in 50 years primary succession would have continued and grow more plants with a forest being made, and then in 100 years bigger plants will start to grow.
Primary Succession involves the establishment of a community of a barren habitat and secondary succession involves the reestablishment of a community in an area that has been disturbed.
2: What impact do humans have on succession?
Suspending succession in one phase or another or by causing an event that restarts the succesion cycle, such as forest fires
Forest Primary Succession:
http://techalive.mtu.edu/meec/demo/PrimarySuccession.html
3: What causes this primary succession? List at least two other examples of primary succession you can think of.
The cause of this primary succession is the glacier melts, lava flow coving a landscape.
4: What are the 1st species to arrive after the succession event?
The first species to arrive after succession event are lichens and mosses
5: How does the rate of secondary succession compare to primary succession? Why do they differ? Explain.
Both successions take along time to form back. Primary takes close to thousands of years because it starts in an area that has been completely destroyed. Secondary takes close to hundreds of years because it starts in an area that has been destroyed by natural disaster, burning, or another reason that destroyed the area but it still has soil.
Secondary Succession:
8: Fire is one cause of secondary succession. List at least 4 other examples of secondary succession.
The renewal of a crop after harvesting, a volcanic eruption, renewal after diseases, a forest renews after logging
9: Imagine a lawn on campus or in someone’s yard. Are there any examples of succession there now? If no one maintained it for five years, what might it look like? What would it look like after 10 years? 50? 100?
No because we maintain the lawn by cutting the grass, removing weeds and fertilizing it. If not maintained, the grass and weeds will grow larger, or the grass would die out from not being taken care of. At 10 years the shrub would start to grow then in 50 years primary succession would have continued and grow more plants with a forest being made, and then in 100 years bigger plants will start to grow.