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OOS-51: Predictability of vegetation dynamics: From quadrats to landscapes, from
years to decades
Thursday,
August 11, 1:30 PM - 5 PM, Meeting Rooms 511c and 511f, Level 5, Palais
des congrès de Montréal
Organizers:
Mark Fulton (mfulton@bemidjistate.edu),
Paul Harcombe
Description:
Predictability,
or lack thereof, is an essential characteristic of any system studied in
science. Predictability has been a key element of most debates in community
ecology, including the Clements vs. Gleason clash in the early 20th century, and
the current controversy about the prevalence of stochastic ecological drift. As
society increasingly asks ecologists to forecast the consequences of policy
decisions, questions about predictability of community dynamics become
increasingly urgent, specifically: what aspects of community change are
predictable, and at what spatial and temporal scales can predictability be
found? This session features long-term studies of vegetation change in
grasslands, old fields, and forests. The studies span spatial scales from 1 m2
quadrats to >500 km2 landscapes, and temporal resolution from a
year to half a century. In some of the study systems, the dynamics are primarily
controlled by internal interactions, in others, by external boundary conditions.
It is not yet clear whether there are generalizations to be made about
predictability–that is, whether predictability is predictable–but
generalizations can only emerge through comparisons across many systems. The
goal of this session is to stimulate the dialogue on these issues by presenting
a wide range of case studies.
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