Journal Article

Disturbance and landscape dynamics in a changing world

Turner, Monica G.

2010

Overview

Disturbance regimes are changing rapidly, and the consequences of such changes for ecosystems and linked social-ecological systems will be profound. This paper synthesizes current understanding of disturbance with an emphasis on fundamental contributions to contemporary landscape and ecosystem ecology, then identifies future research priorities. Studies of disturbance led to insights about heterogeneity, scale, and thresholds in space and time and catalyzed new paradigms in ecology. Because they create vegetation patterns, disturbances also establish spatial patterns of many ecosystem processes on the landscape. Drivers of global change will produce new spatial patterns, altered disturbance regimes, novel trajectories of change, and surprises. Future disturbances will continue to provide valuable opportunities for studying pattern-process interactions. Changing disturbance regimes will produce acute changes in ecosystems and ecosystem services over the short (years to decades) and long term (centuries and beyond). Future research should address questions related to (1) disturbances as catalysts of rapid ecological change, (2) interactions among disturbances, (3) relationships between disturbance and society, especially the intersection of land use and disturbance, and (4) feedbacks from disturbance to other global drivers. Ecologists should make a renewed and concerted effort to understand and anticipate the causes and consequences of changing disturbance regimes.

• Publisher: Ecological Society of America
• Subject: Animal and plant ecology / Animal, plant and microbial ecology / Awards & honors / Biological and medical sciences / Boreal forests / Catalysts / Climate Change / Conservation of Natural Resources - methods / Disturbance / disturbance regime / Disturbances / Ecological disturbance / Ecological monitoring / Ecology / Ecosystem / ecosystem ecology / Ecosystem services / Ecosystem studies / Ecosystems / Environmental changes / Environmental Monitoring / fire / Fire ecology / Forest ecology / Forest ecosystems / Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology / General aspects / global change / Heterogeneity / Human Activities / Land use / Landscape / Landscape ecology / Landscapes / MacArthur Address / PERSPECTIVES: THE ROBERT H. MACARTHUR AWARD LECTURE / Pinus contorta / scale / Social-ecological systems / spatial heterogeneity / succession / Synecology / Time Factors / Vegetation / Vegetation patterns / Yellowstone National Park