Abstract
Some historical notes are presented on the start and early development of the Working-Group for Data-Processing, now Working-Group for Theoretical Vegetation Science, of the International Association for Vegetation Science. One of the major outcomes of the first period of activities in the Working-Group has been the creation of a phytosociological coding and retrieval system to be used in combination with multivariate methods. One branch of classical phytosociology which could have profited much from the Working-Group’s achievements, i.e. syntaxonomy, never developed fully into a numerical syntaxonomy and, in fact, it did not develop much at all over the last 20 yr.
The next phase in the development of the Working Group is characterized by a strong emphasis on vegetation dynamics. First, these dynamical studies concentrated on real sequences of data from permanent plots, which were treated with the numerical methods available. Later, dynamical models started to be developed in order to predict succession and other forms of long-term vegetation dynamics, for which real data are not available.
The third phase, which has been entered only recently, is characterized by an overall emphasis on vegetation theory, from which both the most appropriate choice of numerical methods in any particular case, and dynamical phenomena can be approached. Moreover, vegetation theory is of fundamental importance for the development of the plant community concept and of vegetation typology.
In addition, some remarks are made on the growing need for vegetation ecology to cooperate with experimental ecophysiology and population ecology.
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© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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van der Maarel, E. (1990). Theoretical vegetation science on the way. In: Grabherr, G., Mucina, L., Dale, M.B., Ter Braak, C.J.F. (eds) Progress in theoretical vegetation science. Advances in vegetation science, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1934-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1934-1_1
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