Climax vegetation is the vegetation which establishes itself on a given site for given climatic conditions in the absence of anthropic action after a long time (it is the asymptotic or quasi equilibrium state of the local ecosystem).
Tropical evergreen forest is an example of climax vegetation, as are temperate forests, tundras, savannas, grassland etc.
An ecosystem which has reached its climax is more resilient to perturbations (climatic or anthropic) than an artificial plantation.
The term climax community is an outdated ecological term for a community of plants and animals which is the result of succession, where a biological system, a community, or a soil has reached a steady state.
The idea of a single climatic climax originates with Frederic Clements' idea of the ecological community as an organic superorganism in which the various stages of successional development could be seen as analogous with the ontological development of an organism.
Later developments in the field of ecology saw the decline of climax theory; theories which took into account the fact that the timelines required for the development of climaxvegetation were unrealistically long, and most vegetation could better be explained by more stochastic factors.
Ecological succession is sometimes see as having an end-stage called the called the climax, which was thought to represent the ultimate vegetation (called the climax community) in equilibrium with the local climax.
At the turn of the 20th century, Henry Chandler Cowles was one of the prime movers in the emerging study of "dynamic ecology", through his study of the Indiana Dunes, sand dunes at the southern end of Lake Michigan.
Cowles found that he could relate the vegetation at any point in the dunes to several variables: the distance from the lake shore, the estimated age of the dune, and the type of soil that had developed.
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