Tropical forest regeneration after abandonment of former agricultural land depends critically on the input tree seeds, yet seed dispersal is increasingly disrupted in contemporary human-modified landscapes. Here, we introduce concept seed-rain–successional feedbacks as a deterministic process which rain shaped by successional dynamics internal to site and that acts reinforce priority effects. W...

We use sediment cores from lakes in Glacier Bay National Park to examine the relationship between successional changes in catchment vegetation and trends in water-column nitrogen (a limiting nutrient) and lake primary production. Terrestrial succession at Glacier Bay follows several different pathways, with older sites in the lower bay being colonized directly by spruce (Picea) and by-passing a...

The competition-colonization trade-off has long been a mechanism explaining patterns of species coexistence and diversity in nonequilibrium systems. It forms one explanation of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH) for local communities--specifically that diversity should be maximized at intermediate disturbance frequencies, yet only a fraction of empirical studies support IDH predictio...

Agriculture plays a major role in the global fluxes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane. From 1991 to 1999, we measured gas fluxes and other sources of global warming potential (GWP) in cropped and nearby unmanaged ecosystems. Net GWP (grams of carbon dioxide equivalents per square meter per year) ranged from 110 in our conventional tillage systems to -211 in earl...

We use sediment cores from lakes in Glacier Bay National Park to examine the relationship between successional changes in catchment vegetation and trends in water-column nitrogen (a limiting nutrient) and lake primary production. Terrestrial succession at Glacier Bay follows several different pathways, with older sites in the lower bay being colonized directly by spruce (Picea) and by-passing a...

Abstract Beavers ( Castor spp.) are ecosystem engineers that induce local disturbance and ecological succession, which turns terrestrial into aquatic ecosystems creates habitat heterogeneity in a landscape. have been proposed as tool for biodiversity conservation restoration. So far, most research has compared beaver wetlands non-beaver wetlands, but few studies explored how beaver-created succ...