Take a Walk at Ivy Creek

Brown Trail
A Lesson in Succession

Introduction to Secondary Succession

The fields and woodlands at Ivy Creek Natural Area show what typically happens in the Piedmont when farmlands are abandoned and nature is allowed to take its course - a sequence of changes called succession.

When pastures and cornfields are abandoned or forests are leveled by clear-cutting or fire, natural plant communities will repopulate the disturbed area. These communities are characterized by rapid and continual change, particularly in the early stages of re-establishment. Pioneering species, tolerant of poor conditions and in need of direct sunlight, appear first. As they grow, they shade the soil and otherwise alter the immediate environment to their own detriment and in favor of species in the next seral stage of succession. This continues until the plant community becomes more or less stable and no longer significantly alters the environment itself. At this stage, less predictable environmental impacts will be the agents of change.

Forest regeneration on abandoned agricultural land, as at the Ivy Creek Natural Area, is so common in the eastern United States that the process has taken on a descriptive name of its own - old-field succession. The Ivy Creek Natural Area is virtually a "natural laboratory" for old-field succession.

Next: A visit to an "old field"