Softwood trees and finally to the tall hardwoods whose crowns knit together to From the sun-loving grasses, to quick-growing And so, over time theĮcosystem begins to change. Its growth than that of the species that came before it. Each new community inherits an environment better suited to This replacement of species assemblages repeats itself as As these species live and die, they build up nutrients in the soil, allowing for a new guard of species to move in. The first organisms to return are called “ pioneer species”, typically fast-growing grasses, annual plants and other low, scrubby things that can take quick advantage of the now abundant sunlight. When the smoke clears, nature gets to work rebuilding from the dirt up. If it’s hot enough it will scorch everything in its path, leaving only charred wood and smoldering soil. Take, for example, a fire searing through forests in Northwest North America. In ecological terms, succession is the way in which ecosystems change from one state to the next following a disturbance. What matters more than age is a forest’s stage in a process called succession. All forests grow to maturity at different rates based on their environment, and some trees can even live thousands of years, so the term “old-growth” is highly relative.
Human-caused clearings fragment and degrade IFLs.Īge is one factor in the formation of a primary forest, although there is no set birthday at which a forest becomes “primary”. However, these younger patches must have been caused by natural disturbance patterns like floods or wildfire. Within the boundary of an IFL you might find younger forests, clearings and areas of rock or ice in addition to primary forests. Both terms indicate a forest with no significant disturbances in recent record due to human activity, but while primary forests refer to areas of forest having reached the final stage of succession, IFLs encompass a broader patchwork of undisturbed area. Global Forest Watch (GFW) has data available on both humid primary forests within the tropics and intact forest landscapes (IFLs) globally. The vocabulary is often interchangeable, but when speaking scientifically, there are some key distinctions that set these terms apart. “Ancient”, “old-growth”, “primary”, “intact”- there are lots of terms used to describe Earth’s biggest, oldest and most natural forests.
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