Plants in Changing Environments
Linking Physiological, Population, and Community Ecology

Describes the effects of disturbance, species competition and coexistence, and the processes of plant succession.

F. A. Bazzaz (Author)

9780521398435, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 October 1996

332 pages, 152 b/w illus. 9 tables
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.3 cm, 0.54 kg

' … a gem: self-contained in style, reference and content, a first calling point for all my future enquiries about successional processes.' Annals of Botany Company

Forces of nature and human intervention lead to innumerable local, regional and sometimes global changes in plant community patterns. Irrespective of the causes and the intensity of change, ecosystems are often naturally able to recover most of their attributes through natural succession. In this thoughtful and provocative new book, Fakhri Bazzaz integrates and synthesises information on how disturbance changes the environment, how species function, coexist, and share or compete for resources in populations and communities, and how species replace each other over successional time. Furthermore, the book shows how a diverse array of plant species have been used to examine fundamental questions in plant ecology by integrating physiological, population and community ecology. Graduate students and research workers in plant ecology, global change, conservation and restoration will find the perspective and analysis offered by this book an exciting contribution to the development of our understanding of plant successional change.

1. Introduction and background
2. Plant strategies and successional change: a resource-response perspective
3. Community composition and trends of dominance and diversity in recovering ecosystems
4. The environment of successional plants: disentangling causes and consequences
5. Recruitment in successional habitats: general trends and specific differences
6. How do plants interact with each other?
7. Plant/plant interactions and ecosystem recovery
8. Competition and the evolution of response breadths and niches
9. Ecological and genetic variation in early successional plants
10. Coping with a variable environment: habitat selection, response flexibility: tracking, acclimation, and plasticity
11. Physiological trends of plant in recovering ecosystems
12. Crossing the scales: can we predict community composition from individual species response?
13. From fields to forests: forest dynamics and regeneration in a changing environment
14. Succession and global change: the implications of migration, extinction, and adaptation
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Ecological science, the Biosphere [PSAF]