The Creation and Maintenance of Heather Moorland

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Heather moorland

Plagioclimax- the plant community that exists when human interaction prevents the climatic climax vegetation being reached.

 

Climatic climax vegetation- the vegetation that evolves in a climate region if the seral progression is uninterrupted by human activity, tectonic processes, etc. The climatic climax vegetation for the UK is Oak and Ash trees.

Heather moorland is one of the major components of the British Isles, especially in the upland areas, but it was never a major part of the primary succession that followed the retreat of the ice at the end of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago. It owes its present extent to human interference and the clearance of the upland forests.

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This means that the Heather moorland is a plagioclimax. A plagioclimax is when humans stop the climatic climax vegetation being reached.

The woodland was first cleared out to allow crops to be grown and to provide space for grazing, but once the trees were removed there were no deep roots to bring the nutrients to the surface and renew the soil fertility. Instead the heavy rainfall, which would have been intercepted by the trees, was able to leach the nutrients out of the soils. So the upland areas were often colonised by bracken, grasses, scrub woodland and heather.

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