Ecological Site Descriptions: Developmental Considerations for Woodlands and Forests

Abstract

An ecological site description (ESD) conveys important interpretive and management information about the dynamic behavior of a related set of forest overstory and understory biological communities. Ecological sites and their descriptions provide a consistent framework for stratifying and describing soil, vegetation, and abiotic features; delineating units that share similar capabilities to respond to management activities or disturbance processes; and estimating ecosystem services that can be expected from particular soil/vegetation combinations. ESDs are intricately tied to the extent, history, and use of the forests and woodlands that they describe. The fundamental assumption underlying ecological sites is that soils, climate, and geomorphology can be correlated with suffi cient precision to provide a site-specifi c basis for successful ecological predictions and management decisions. A systematic knowledge of how management and disturbance processes interact with abiotic and biotic factors is critical to understanding ecological processes and relationships. A state-and-transition model (STM) within each ESD is a diagram displaying those relationships that applies to a correlated grouping of soil series components mapped as part of the National Cooperative Soil Survey.