Buell-Small Succession Study (New Jersey)

by

Scott J. Meiners

• LAST MODIFIED: 20 March 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0258

Introduction

In 1958, Murray F. Buell (PhD 1935, University of Minnesota), Helen F. Buell (PhD 1938, University of Minnesota), and later, John A. Small (PhD 1928, Rutgers University) developed a landmark study of old field succession based in the Piedmont region of the US state New Jersey. Continuing to this day, the Buell-Small Succession Study (the BSS) represents the longest, continuous study of post-agricultural succession in existence. The BSS is composed of ten agricultural fields, each abandoned after a variety of pre-abandonment conditions including crop (hay versus row crop rotation), plowing (abandoned with crop residue intact or plowed under), and season of abandonment (fall versus spring). These fields were abandoned in pairs in alternate years through 1966, producing a range of initial weather conditions at the onset of succession. In 2015, an additional experimental treatment, deer exclosure, was added when half of the fields were enclosed with a 3.7-meter fence to reduce access by locally overabundant white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginanus). Other than these external and pre-abandonment treatments, no direct experimental manipulations have been conducted on these fields. The ten fields range in size from 0.5 to 1.0 ha in area, and each contain forty-eight, permanently marked 1 m² (0.5 × 2.0 m) plots. At each sampling, percentage cover of each plant species is recorded as is the number of stems of tree species. Sampling occurred on an annual basis until 1979, at which point sampling switched to alternate years, with half of fields being sampled each year as vegetation turnover slowed. It is the permanent plot aspect of the study that provides the particular ability of the BSS data to provide fine spatial scale perspectives on temporal processes. The lack of experimental manipulations allows the BSS data to be employed to address a broad diversity of ecological questions, including many research threads never considered by the project originators. Research using the BSS data has addressed the tempo and trajectory of successional dynamics, as planned by the project’s originators. As the fields became heavily invaded by several invasive plant species over time, biological invasions have become another major research thread, focusing on controllers and consequences of invasions. The advent of functional and phylogenetic ecology has provided another opportunity for the BSS data to present a critical, long-term perspective to this work. Lastly, as unaided succession is essentially passive restoration, the BSS has also been used to inform habitat management.

History and Motivation behind the BSS

Mettler’s Woods, one of the few remaining old growth forests in New Jersey’s Piedmont region, was geographically close to Rutgers University and was a site often used in research projects, including the Buell’s. A storm blew down many trees in the forest in November of 1950 (Buell, et al. 1954), prompting some harvest logging and some motivation to protect the unique property. In 1955 Rutgers acquired the property with the help of a local conservation group and monies from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. The property included both the twenty-six ha old growth forest as well as thirty ha of agricultural land that surrounded it (Cadenasso, et al. 2009), forming the core of the Hutcheson Memorial Forest, a research property still managed by Rutgers. This new property was under the direction of Murray Buell, who now needed to determine the research that could be done in the new site. Buell had recently studied the successional chronosequence for the Piedmont region with a graduate student, using a space for time substitution approach that used Mettler’s Woods as a successional target. Murray was interested to see if intense study of one site would generate the same successional patterns that Bard 1952 suggested for the area. Also, Egler 1954 had recently presented his “initial floristics” concept of succession. Despite overlapping with Egler at the University of Minnesota, the Buells did not find his arguments convincing and thought about how best to test them. These ideas led them to develop the successional study that now bears their name. All of the project originators were involved in the project until their deaths, continuing to guide the Buell-Small Succession Study (BSS). The study has persisted, relying on field assistance from graduate students, and only missed one year of sampling during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Meiners, et al. 2015 is a comprehensive monograph based on the BSS that provides an integrative view of vegetation dynamics using the first fifty years of the BSS data. This text touches specifically on all of the individual topics introduced here.

• Bard, G. E. 1952. Secondary succession on the Piedmont of New Jersey. Ecological Monographs 22:195–215.

  DOI: 10.2307/1943565

  Classic space for time substitution study of succession in the same biogeographic region as Hutcheson Memorial Forest. This study used the old growth forest at the Hutcheson Memorial Forest as the successional endpoint, a composition that successional processes would presumably be reached in other sites given enough time. Identified a prolonged stage dominated by Andropogon scoparius (now Schizachyrium scoparium), not repeated in the BSS data (see Pickett 1983 cited under Early Publications from Hutcheson Memorial Forest).

• Buell, M. F., H. F. Buell, and J. A. Small. 1954. Fire in the history of Mettler’s Woods. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 81: 253–255.

  DOI: 10.2307/2481817

  Documented regular burning cycles in the forest that disappeared as Europeans settled the area. Also documents the storm damage that allowed fire scars to be studied on storm-killed trees.

• Cadenasso, M. L., S. J. Meiners, and S. T. A. Pickett. 2009. The success of succession: A symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Buell-Small Succession Study. Applied Vegetation Science 12:3–8.

  DOI: 10.1111/j.1654-109X.2009.01018.x

  Documents the history of the BSS and the Hutcheson Memorial Forest, including the motivation behind the work. Also provides a summary of work with the BSS data conducted at that time.

• Egler, F. E. 1954. Vegetation science concepts I. Initial floristic composition, a factor in old-field vegetation development. Vegetatio 4:412–417.

  DOI: 10.1007/BF00275587

  This paper outlines Egler’s view that local species availability is a primary driving factor in determining the composition of successional habitats. Also outlines relay floristics, Egler’s perspective on F. E. Clement’s successional views, dominant at that time (See the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Ecology article “Succession[obo-9780199830060-0001]”).

• Meiners, S. J., S. T. A. Pickett, and M. L. Cadenasso. 2015. An integrative approach to successional dynamics: Tempo and mode of vegetation change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511844218

  This book synthesizes five decades of BSS data to document the basic population and community scale successional process that have occurred on the site. This text also explores successional convergence, the successional equivalence of native and non-native species, ecological heterogeneity and the functional ecology of succession. Uses a conceptual framework that relates succession to differentials in site availability, species availability and performance as an organizing structure.