Florida savannah - buzzards - sunset

titmouse

dove and basket

There has always been succession of ecosystems; new organisms, better suited to changing environments, proliferate, and populations less fit, fall to local extinction. Or worse. Today, anthropogenically induced successions occur at a much more rapid rate with acute consequences which echo across landscapes. Habitat fragmentation, invasive species, human caused eutrophication, are some of the major causes of the new rapid successions. They are increasing. The America that the colonists knew changed from forested to agricultural, back to forested (with the onset of the industrial era) - but these changes took hundreds of years. Today landscape modification is occuring in the blink of an eye.

phragmites vs. loosestrife

There seems to be a battle developing involving the density and populations of purple loosetrife and phragmites in Massachusetts. Once very prolific in low, weland areas, loosestrife seems to be (anedotal information only) out competing even very virulent invaders!