Introduction and Aim

Abstract

Ecological succession has been the object of theoretical and methodological considerations as well as of stationary and long-term studies for 80 years. Succession processes are analysed from two viewpoints: system ecology and population ecology. In the former case it is assumed that there exists a system-development trend (Margalef 1968, Odum 1969, Whittaker 1975), whereas a succession is a sequence of communities, that is, specific floristic compositions under specific ecological conditions. With such an approach population dynamics is understood as a phytocoenosis dynamics. Succession studies therefore try to explain the fate of a particular phytocoenoses from its beginning to the dynamic-equilibrium state attained by it, or the fate of the phyotocoenoses following one another (Figure 101).