Vegetation succession in deglaciated landscapes: implications for sediment and landscape stability

Landscapes exposed by glacial retreat provide an ideal natural laboratory to study the processes involved in transforming a highly disturbed, glacially influenced landscape to a stable, diverse ecosystem which supports numerous species and communities. Large‐scale vegetation development and changes in sediment availability, used as a proxy for paraglacial adjustment following rapid deglaciation, were assessed using information from remote sensing. Delineation of broad successional vegetation cover types was undertaken using Landsat satellite imagery (covering a 22 year period) to document the rate and trajectory of terrestrial vegetation development. Use of a space‐for‐time substitution in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, allowed ‘back‐calculation’ of the age and stage of development of six catchments over 206 years. The high accuracy (89.2%) of the remotely sensed information used in monitoring successional change allowed detection of a high rate of change in vegetation classes in early successional stages (bare sediment and alder). In contrast, later successional stages (spruce and spruce–hemlock dominated forest) had high vegetation class retention, and low turnover. Modelled rates of vegetation change generally confirmed the estimated rates of successional turnover previously reported. These data, when combined with the known influence of terrestrial succession on soil development and sediment availability, suggest how physical and biological processes interact over time to influence paraglacial adjustment following deglaciation. This study highlights the application of remote sensing of successional chronosequence landscapes to assess the temporal dynamics of paraglacial adjustment following rapid deglaciation and shows the importance of incorporating bio‐physical interactions within landscape evolution models. © 2014 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

[1]  Brian D. Collins,et al.  Holocene and Recent Geomorphic Processes, Land Use, and Salmonid Habitat in two North Puget Sound River Basins , 2013 .

[2]  A. Wolf,et al.  Disturbance regimes at the interface of geomorphology and ecology , 2012 .

[3]  C. Ballantyne.  A general model of paraglacial landscape response , 2002 .

[4]  A. Milner,et al.  Colonization and development of stream communities across a 200-year gradient in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, U.S.A. , 2000 .

[5]  G. Petts,et al.  A conceptual model for alpine proglacial river channel evolution under changing climatic conditions , 2000 .

[6]  John F. Orwin,et al.  The evidence for paraglacial sedimentation and its temporal scale in the deglacierizing basin of Small River Glacier, Canada , 2004 .

[7]  E. Odum.  The strategy of ecosystem development. , 1969, Science.

[8]  W. Cooper.  The Recent Ecological History of Glacier Bay, Alaska: The Interglacial Forests of Glacier Bay , 1923 .

[9]  M. Stoffel,et al.  The interactions between vegetation and erosion: new directions for research at the interface of ecology and geomorphology , 2012 .

[10]  B. Markham,et al.  Summary of Current Radiometric Calibration Coefficients for Landsat MSS, TM, ETM+, and EO-1 ALI Sensors , 2009 .

[11]  J. Connell,et al.  Mechanisms of Succession in Natural Communities and Their Role in Community Stability and Organization , 1977, The American Naturalist.

[12]  P. Cowie,et al.  Processes, rates, and time scales of fluvial response in an ancient postglacial landscape of the northwest Indian Himalaya , 2010 .

[13]  Bart Kruijt,et al.  Variation of carbon and nitrogen cycling processes along a topographic gradient in a central Amazonian forest , 2004 .

[14]  V. Rull.  Community ecology: diversity and dynamics over time , 2012 .

[15]  O. Slaymaker.  Proglacial, periglacial or paraglacial? , 2009 .

[16]  N. Barrand,et al.  Recent High-Arctic glacial sediment redistribution: A process perspective using airborne lidar , 2011 .

[17]  Alessandro Ferrarini,et al.  Detecting complex relations among vegetation, soil and geomorphology. An in-depth method applied to a case study in the Apennines (Italy) , 2014 .

[18]  C. Fastie,et al.  Causes and Ecosystem Consequences of Multiple Pathways of Primary Succession at Glacier Bay, Alaska , 1995 .

[19]  S. Sader,et al.  Accuracy of landsat-TM and GIS rule-based methods for forest wetland classification in Maine , 1995 .

[20]  J. Matthews,et al.  The Ecology of Recently Deglaciated Terrain: A Geoecological Approach to Glacier Forelands and Primary Succession. , 1993 .

[21]  R. Naiman,et al.  Plants intertwine fluvial landform dynamics with ecological succession and natural selection : a niche construction perspective for riparian systems. , 2009 .

[22]  J. Knight,et al.  Periglacial and Paraglacial Processes and Environments , 2009 .

[23]  L. Benda,et al.  Morphology and Evolution of Salmonid Habitats in a Recently Deglaciated River Basin, Washington State, USA , 1992 .

[24]  W. Cooper.  The Problem of Glacier Bay, Alaska: A Study of Glacier Variations , 1937 .

[25]  S. Goldhor.  Ecology , 1964, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

[26]  F. Chapin,et al.  Interactions and Linkages among Ecosystems during Landscape Evolution , 2007 .

[27]  M. Pihlatie,et al.  Factors controlling regional differences in forest soil emission of nitrogen oxides (NO and N2O) , 2006 .

[28]  J. Clague,et al.  Postglacial sediment budget of Chilliwack Valley, British Columbia , 2012 .

[29]  K. Peterson.  The ecology of recently deglaciated terrain , 1993 .

[30]  M. Liermann,et al.  Channel pattern and river-floodplain dynamics in forested mountain river systems , 2006 .

[31]  A. Milner,et al.  STREAM DEVELOPMENT IN GLACIER BAY NATIONAL PARK, ALASKA, U.S.A. , 1989 .

[32]  C. Woodcock,et al.  An assessment of several linear change detection techniques for mapping forest mortality using multitemporal landsat TM data , 1996 .

[33]  N. Svanvik,et al.  interactions between , 1998 .

[34]  S. Goetz,et al.  Large-Scale Patterns of Forest Succession as Determined by Remote Sensing , 1991 .

[35]  A. Milner,et al.  The role of riparian vegetation and woody debris in the development of macroinvertebrate assemblages in streams , 2005 .

[36]  Dominique Laffly,et al.  Impacts of recent paraglacial dynamics on plant colonization: A case study on Midtre Lovénbreen foreland, Spitsbergen (79°N) , 2008 .

[37]  J. Thornes,et al.  Vegetation and Erosion. , 1990 .

[38]  B. Cardinale,et al.  Dynamic interactions of life and its landscape: feedbacks at the interface of geomorphology and ecology , 2010 .

[39]  M. Begon,et al.  Ecology: Individuals, Populations and Communities, 3rd edn. , 1997 .

[40]  Jean Poesen,et al.  Impact of plant roots on the resistance of soils to erosion by water: a review , 2005 .

[41]  H. Viles,et al.  Biogeomorphological disturbance regimes: progress in linking ecological and geomorphological systems , 2008 .

[42]  Marwan A. Hassan,et al.  Effects of glacial retreat on proglacial streams and riparian zones in the Coast and North Cascade Mountains , 2014 .

[43]  P. Vitousek,et al.  THE REGULATION OF CHEMICAL BUDGETS OVER THE COURSE OF TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEM SUCCESSION , 1979 .

[44]  J. Chambers,et al.  Regional ecosystem structure and function: ecological insights from remote sensing of tropical forests. , 2007, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[45]  S. Schumm,et al.  Sediment yield from disturbed earth systems , 1995 .

[46]  John R. Dymond,et al.  Correction of the topographic effect in remote sensing , 1999, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[47]  Bob Blakley,et al.  Conceptual Model , 2017, Encyclopedia of GIS.

[48]  Richard A. Marston,et al.  Geomorphology and vegetation on hillslopes: Interactions, dependencies, and feedback loops , 2010 .

[49]  R. L. Crocker,et al.  SOIL DEVELOPMENT IN RELATION TO VEGETATION AND SURFACE AGE AT GLACIER BAY, ALASKA* , 1955 .

[50]  S. McColl.  Paraglacial rock-slope stability , 2012 .

[51]  Dominique Laffly,et al.  Analysis of plant colonization on an arctic moraine since the end of the Little Ice Age using remotely sensed data and a Bayesian approach. , 2005 .

[52]  David R. Montgomery,et al.  Geomorphic processes and riverine habitat. , 2001 .

[53]  Sebastian Schmidtlein,et al.  Biogeomorphic interactions in the Turtmann glacier forefield, Switzerland , 2013 .

[54]  Russell G. Congalton,et al.  A review of assessing the accuracy of classifications of remotely sensed data , 1991 .

[55]  J. Quinton,et al.  The influence of vegetation species and plant properties on runoff and soil erosion: results from a rainfall simulation study in south east Spain , 1997 .

[56]  S. Fitzsimons.  Paraglacial redistribution of glacial sediments in the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica , 1996 .

[57]  W. Reiners,et al.  Plant Diversity in a Chronosequence at Glacier Bay, Alaska , 1971 .

[58]  Michael A. Wulder,et al.  Landsat continuity: Issues and opportunities for land cover monitoring , 2008 .

[59]  M. Rode,et al.  The role of plant resources in forest succession: changes in radiation, water and nutrient fluxes, and plant productivity over a 300-yr-long chronosequence in NW-Germany , 1999 .

[60]  D. Passmore,et al.  Paraglacial adjustment of the fluvial system to Late Pleistocene deglaciation: the Milfield Basin, northern England , 2009 .

[61]  M. Church,et al.  Paraglacial Sedimentation: A Consideration of Fluvial Processes Conditioned by Glaciation , 1972 .

[62]  F. Stuart Chapin,et al.  Mechanisms of Primary Succession Following Deglaciation at Glacier Bay, Alaska , 1994 .

[63]  E. Tabacchi,et al.  Reciprocal adjustments between landforms and living organisms: Extended geomorphic evolutionary insights , 2008 .

[64]  J. Barretta,et al.  Potential nitrogen immobilization in grassland soils across a soil organic matter gradient , 2022 .