![]() Research documents increasing habitat fragmentation within terrestrial landscapes.Īs fragmentation increases, ecotones are created, expanded, and moved, and Ecotones are an inherent part of most landscapes. ![]() There is an emerging consensus among ecologists that ecotones are criticalįor their ecological roles. Scales of ecotones range from the level of ecoregions or biomes to community-level and finer (Johnston et al 1992). Causes of ecotones include "disturbance (e.g., fire, human activities)" and "natural edaphic boundaries (e.g., soils, hydrology, climate)" (Johnston et al. While a tension zone is more narrowly used to apply only to the range limits of Although the two terms are associated, ecotone is a moreīroadly applied term than is tension zone. Both ecotones and tension zones can vary in width and may consist ofĬhanges in vegetation structure, such as grasses to trees, as well as changes in So a tension zone or transition zone is a concept incorporating a more complex understanding of competing forces than the more simplistic "ecotone" or sharpĬhange. Ecotone approaches synonymy with tension zone, but without the sophistication of the latter. Habitat" in which the vegetation can change abruptly. 1980) described an ecotone as "an intermediate Own (e.g., forest-meadow ecotone)" (Resinger and Gomez Gutierrez 1992, pp.ĩ7-98). ![]() Line or strip of vegetation between two different communities which has characteristics of both kinds of neighboring vegetation as well as characteristics of its "transition zone between two plant communities" (Krebs 1994) and a "transition ![]() Within the zone, while the term ecotone is used to mean abrupt change happening between two communities in a particular place either at small scales or as a The tension zone concept describes a large-scale phenomenonĪcross 10-60 miles, inclusive of a variety of smaller scale vegetation differences The tension zone concept and the concept of the ecotone differ in their levels Level where a moss cushion meets the soil to the macroecotone level of differentĮcosystems (such as desert and tropical forest) connected by mesoecotones (suchĪs a grassland-spruce forest ecotone) (Rusek 1992). Ecotones operate at a variety of spatial scales, from the microecotone Provinces, ecologists have broadened the tension zone concept into the idea ofĮcotones.
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