Developing an approach to address the problem of 'historical accidents': an example from SE Utah canyons
Dott CE and Allen TF. 1993. Developing an approach to address the problem of 'historical accidents': an example from SE Utah canyons. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. 74(2):218
The influence of past events in shaping plant communities is an important constraint on vegetation. However, it is difficult to distinguish from the often complex history of a site what factor(s) may have left the strongest imprint. A conceptual model has been developed that separates historical influences into categories, which can act as constraints on community structure. Preliminary field work on canyons in SE Utah suggests that an array of disturbances and historical influences may be unraveled through their relative spatiotemporal scales. Based on the conceptual model, it is hypothesized that for a historical event: l) to occur the system must be large enough to allow disturbance propagation; 2) to be preserved the system must be small enough to exclude larger scale events. Preliminary results allow separation of a suite of historical influences (including ancient human land-use, livestock grazing, exotic species invasion, flash floods, and fire) along spatial lines.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Dott, Cynthia; Allen, Timothy
- Units
- NABR
- Keywords
- Disturbance, Ecology, Historic, IAR, Other, Riparian, Vegetation