Question

What is ecological succession?

Answer 1

1. Ecological succession is a process through which ecosystems tend to change over a period of time.
2.  Succession can be related to seasonal environmental changes, which create changes in the community of plants and animals living in the ecosystem.
3.  Other successional events may take much longer periods of time extending to several decades. If a forest is cleared, it is initially colonized by a certain group of species of plants and animals, which gradually change through an orderly process of community development.
4. One can predict that an opened up area will gradually be converted into a grassland, a shrub land and finally a woodland and a forest if permitted to do so without human interference.
5. There is a tendency for succession to produce a more or less stable state at the end of the successional stages. Developmental stages in the ecosystem thus consist of a pioneer stage, a series of changes known as serel stages, and finally a climax stage.