Fictional Ecology

[forestofglory]

So the book I’m reading has a moor and also some trees. I was confused for a while because moors shouldn’t have trees on them, but I eventually figured out that there is forest next to the moor. I’m still ecologically skeptical about this arrangement but at least there aren’t trees on the moor.

My ecological skepticism comes from my understanding of the concept of succession. Put it its most simple form succession means that plant communities are always in flux and that larger species will invade areas of smaller species. So grassland will become scrubland and scrubland will become woodland. Unless there is some reason why it can’t. Reasons include climate, grazing animals, fire, and soil conditions. For example before Europeans arrived the great plains of North America remained grassland because the plans were regularly burned by Native Americans and grazed by bison.

So when my book has moor next to the forest I wonder why the trees don’t take over the moor. I mean I could come up with several plausible reasons, but I’m finding myself distracted form the story by wondering about the ecology.

Comments

[davidgillon]

Not sure I'd agree having pretty much grown up in the Durham dales. The dales and the moors are so interwoven it isn't unusual to find a sudden stand of trees in a protected dip in the landscape where the soil and water will support them. On the open tops the sheep and burning mostly keep the vegetation to heather, but it's certainly not an absolute monoculture.

Equally there's now extensive forestry adjacent to the moors - Kielder, Hamsterly etc, but it's managed forestry, so unlikely to do much spontaneous spreading.

[forestofglory]

I bow to actual experience as opposed to my guessing form first principles. (I should really keep in mind how manged the UK landscape is.) I've just read so many books that feature endless moors. Come to think of it the patchy landscape you describe sound more realistic then my books one forest surround by endless moor.

[davidgillon]

If you happen to have Google Earth installed, it really shows up quite well - take a look at somewhere like "Cauldron Snout" (it's a waterfall on the Tees) for right up on the high tops and about as bleak (and beautiful) a landscape as I know, yet "Forest-in-Teesdale" is only three miles away, with the river running through a wooded ravine and the moors running almost up to it.

[forthwritten]

You might like to look at the New Forest geography too - not moors as such, but a mixture of heath and (usually) deciduous woodland (typically oak, beech, birch, ash and other native trees with some conifer plantations). You can often step out of a wooded bit into open heath of heather and gorse. It's again managed heathland - as you say, if it wasn't managed, it would eventually turn into woodland - and this is usually done through controlled burning.

The New Forest has a long history of negotiated land access rights for grazing and pigs, and the ponies that roam across the forest aren't wild but are all owned by someone. There's an annual drift where the ponies are rounded up and new foals are branded or otherwise marked to show who they belong to.