Unexpected ecological advances made possible by long-term data: A Coweeta example

In the 1970s, Forest Service and academic researchers clearcut the forest in Watershed 7 in the Coweeta Basin to observe how far the perturbation would move the ecosystem and how quickly the ecosystem would return to its predisturbance state. Our long-term observations demonstrated that this view of resistance and resilience was too simplistic. Forest disturbance triggered a chain of ecological dynamics that are still evolving after 40 years. Short-term pulses in dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) (3 years) and streamflows (4 years) were followed by several years in which the system appeared to be returning to predisturbance conditions. Then however, changes in forest composition triggered a regime change in DIN dynamics from biological to hydrological control as well as persistent high stream DIN levels mediated by climatic conditions. These forest composition changes also led to later reductions in streamflow. These long-term observations of streamflows, stream DIN concentrations, stream DIN exports, and stand composition have substantially advanced our understanding of forest ecosystem dynamics; and they demonstrate the value of long-term observational data in revealing ecosystem complexities and surprises, generating new hypotheses, and motivating mechanistic research. Shorter observational records from this experiment would have produced incomplete or erroneous inference. This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Hydrological Processes Science of Water > Water Quality Water and Life > Nature of Freshwater Ecosystems