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Savanna and Open-Woodland Communities

  • Chapter
Conservation in Highly Fragmented Landscapes

Abstract

Vegetation maps including the upper Midwest generally show two basic vegetation formations: prairie and forest (Vestal 1936, Shelford 1963, Anderson 1970, Iverson et al. 1991). The sharp dividing boundaries implied are more a matter of convenience of scale and difficulties in mapping variable boundaries than a reflection of reality. Of course, the fires that contributed largely to the maintenance of the tallgrass prairies of this region (Risser et al. 1981, Axelrod 1985) usually did not stop abruptly at a forest border. These fires penetrated beyond the open grassland, often forming structural gradients from open prairie to closed forest. The kinetic quality of the prairie-forest transition zone has challenged our spatialand temporal-scale ecological understanding, yielding variable interpretations of vegetational history (Bielmann and Brenner 1951, Steyermark 1959), distribution (Braun 1950, Anderson 1983, Nuzzo 1986), and classification (White and Madany 1978; Nelson 1985; Faber-Langendoen 1994). A mixture of climatic and landscape conditions, fire history, and biotic interactions results in a mosaic pattern of forest, savanna, and prairie in the Midwest (Kilburn 1959, Anderson 1983) that is considered a prairie-forest ecotone (Barbour et al. 1980).

Among the ‘oak-openings’ you find some of the most lovely landscapes of the West, and travel for miles and miles through varied park scenery of natural growth, with all the diversity of gently swelling hill and dale—here, trees grouped, or standing single—and there, arranged in long avenues as though by human hands, with slips of open meadow between. Whenever a few years elapse without the conflagration [fire] touching a district, the thick sown seeds of the slumbering forest, with which the rich vegetable mould seems to be laden, spring up from the green sod of the country. The surface is first covered with brushwood composed of sumac, hazel, wild cherry, and oak; and if the fire be still kept out, other forest trees follow.

C. J. Latrobe, traveling in the Midwest, The Rambler in North America, 1835

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  1. Illinois Natural History Survey, Champaign, IL, 61820, USA

    John B. Taft

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  1. Center for Population Biology, University of California, 95616, Davis, CA, USA

    Mark W. Schwartz

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Taft, J.B. (1997). Savanna and Open-Woodland Communities. In: Schwartz, M.W. (eds) Conservation in Highly Fragmented Landscapes. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0656-7_2

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