Natural Processes & the Broader Landscape: Chestnut Oak / Mountain Laurel Forest in Rock Creek Park
Natural Processes
What is responsible for forming and maintaining the “patterns” that we recognize as this natural community? What shapes the land, forms the soil and topsoil, influences the water supply and all the other things that bring and keep this suite of plants together? Natural processes. (Ecobit: Natural Processes)
Important natural processes in the Chestnut Oak / Mountain Laurel Forest include
- occasional fire
- exposure to sun, wind, and storms
- processes that create extreme dryness in the soils
- erosion
- canopy gap regeneration
Large-scale Natural Processes and Ecological Systems
Some natural processes—such as fire—act on large scales and affect more than one natural community at a time. No fires have occurred in Rock Creek Park in decades, but in the past fires set by lightning and Native Americans burned high and dry areas, including not just the Chestnut Oak / Mountain Laurel Forest, but also the Mixed Oak / Heath Forest. Most of the plant species in these two natural communities have built-in strategies for surviving occasional fires. Ecobit: Fire: Rising From the Ashes
In fact, these two natural communities can be grouped into a larger landscape unit that ecologists refer to as the Dry Oak - Pine Forest Ecological System. An ecological system is a group of several natural communities that share many of the same natural processes and aspects of physical setting. By extension, they may also share many of the same plant and animal species.
Explore This Ecological System
Click the chart below to learn about this ecological system and its natural processes.
