SUccession at the dunes:
What makes the Indiana Dunes so unique is that there is no where else that you can see such major progression in such a small proximity. This progression is known as succession. Succession is the process by which a habitat changes over time as different plants are established. The general progression goes like this: Bare rock---> Lichens---> Mosses---> Grasses---> Brush---> Deciduous hardwood forest--> Mixed deciduous forest/coniferous forest---> Old growth coniferous forest. The progression in the dunes comes from plant communities which are found along the lake shore. When you walk from sandy beach towards the wooded area, you will notice that there is less sunlight. This is due to the community In the oak forest area, the soil can retain more moisture than the beach due to community plant composition. Sunlight, evaporation, and transpiration decrease from beach area to oak forest area. The farther away you are from the sand, the more moisture the soil retains. The beach is the bare ground, or rock. As you more farther from the beach, you see small shrubs, if you walk a little more, the forests grow larger and thicker, which explains the lack of sunlight.
PRimary and secondary succession, what's the difference?
Primary succession is the first of two types of biological and ecological succession of plant life, occurring in an environment in which new developments of vegetation is usually lacking soil, such as a lava flow or area left from a retreated glacier. In other words, it is the gradual growth of an ecosystem over a longer period.Take Hawaii for instance it was built off of erupted volcanoes and the lava left behind created land, which eventually had to go through primary succession. This means that nothing was there before the land was created by the volcanic ash, the moss and lichen grew off of the sedimentary rock and eventually developed into secondary succession.
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Secondary succession is the second of the ecological successions of plant life. As opposed to the first, primary succession, secondary succession is a process started by an event ( forest fire, harvesting, hurricane) that eliminates an already established ecosystem (a forest or a wheat field) and secondary succession occurs on preexisting soil whereas primary succession usually occurs in a place lacking soil.
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