授课教案。绪论3.pptVIP

* * Case 4 , Vegetation Change: Information from Pollen Records and Modeling 1) There are ecologists who think and work at even larger scales. Two approaches that provide insights into long- term and large-scale process are studies of pollen preserved in lake sediments and theoretical modeling. Some of the pollen produced by plants that live near a lake falls on the lake surface, sinks, and becomes trapped in lake sediments. As the lakeside vegetation changes, the mix of pollen Preserved in the lake’s sediments also changes shown in figure 1.8. Figure 1.5 History from lake sediments Thus pollen preserved in the sediments of individual lakes can be used to reconstruct the history of vegetation in this area. 2) Theoretical models can also provide insights into long- term ecological change. Theoretical analysis by Bruce Milne provide ecologists with way to characterize spatial and temporal changes in vegetation. Milne models ecotones as a kind of phase transition. Ecotones just are transition from one type of ecosystem to another. The transition occurs at the densities where tree cover changes abruptly from one a fragmented landscape of small patches of trees to a landscape where the tree canopies are interconnected. Milne points out that the locations of these critical densities may be used to identify the critical environment conditions that regulate the transition from one vegetation to another. Figure 1.6 Boundaries within landscape by human activity (background) and natural environmental gradients (foreground) The edge between a woodland and a grassland might be defined by the places on the landscape where there is 41% tree cover or 59% tree cover. The distance between ecotonal edges defined by different densities of vegetation may indicate differences in the environmental gradient along the