Abstract
The preceding chapter concentrated on physical factors, especially geology, soils, landform, and hydrology, which create or maintain grassland within the South. In this chapter I consider a range of abiotic and biotic processes and their interactions. These processes include two major positive feedbacks—fire and large herbivores—identified in the general model as reinforcing and accelerating grassland development following a shift to a drier or more seasonal climate. Large grazing and browsing herbivores abounded within North American grasslands, including southern grasslands, for millions of years. That southern grasslands contain a mix of grazing-adapted rhizomatous (sod-forming) grasses and bunchgrasses suggests that megaherbivores influenced the development of these communities. At times the influence of herbivores may have surpassed the role of fire. Megaherbivores had natural predators, which probably exerted top-down control over their populations and affected their evolution of antipredator morphologies and behaviors over long spans of time.
The prevailing vegetation is open forests of long-leaf pine, so open that wagons can be driven through them almost anywhere.
Roland M. Harper (1914, writing about the Florida Panhandle and neighboring Georgia and Alabama)
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References
Bottom-up regulation: Cardinale et al. 2011
Top-down regulation, large carnivores, keystone and strongly interacting species, trophic cascades: Hairston et al. 1960, Paine 1966, Soulé et al. 1988, Koehler and Hornocker 1991, McLaren and Peterson 1994, Power et al. 1996, Maehr 1997, Hulbert 2001, Nowak 2002, Soulé et al. 2003, Thornton et al. 2004, Soulé et al. 2005, Beschta and Ripple 2009, Ripple and Van Valkenburgh 2010, Soulé 2010, Terborgh and Estes 2010, Estes et al. 2011, Dorcas et al. 2012
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Insects: Tschinkel 2002, Earley 2004, King and Tschinkel 2008, Tucker et al. 2010
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Florida dry prairie and Florida grasshopper sparrow: Bridges 2006a and 2006b, Orzell and Bridges 2006b, Platt, Huffman, et al. 2006, Pranty and Tucker 2006, Noss et al. 2008
Canebrakes: Nuttall (1819) 1980, Platt and Brantley 1997, Brantley and Platt 2001, Ellsworth and McComb 2003, Gagnon and Platt 2008, Platt et al. 2009
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Noss, R.F. (2013). Fire, Big Animals, and Interactions. In: Forgotten Grasslands of the South. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-225-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-225-9_5
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