Understanding plant community succession is one of the original pursuits of ecology, forming some of the earliest theoretical frameworks in the field. Much of this was built on the long-term research of William S. Cooper, who established a permanent plot network in Glacier Bay, Alaska, in 1916. This study now represents the longest-running primary succession plot network in the world. Permanent plots are useful for their ability to follow mechanistic change through time without assumptions inherent in space-for-time (chronosequence) designs. After 100-yr, these plots show surprising variety in species composition, soil characteristics (carbon, nitrogen, depth), and percent cover, attributable to variation in initial vegetation establishment first noted by Cooper in the 1916-1923 time period, partially driven by dispersal limitations. There has been almost a complete community composition replacement over the century and general species richness increase, but the effective number of species has declined significantly due to dominance of Salix species which established 100-yr prior (the only remaining species from the original cohort). Where Salix dominates, there is no establishment of "later" successional species like Picea. Plots nearer the entrance to Glacier Bay, and thus closer to potential seed sources after the most recent glaciation, have had consistently higher species richness for 100 yr. Age of plots is the best predictor of soil N content and C:N ratio, though plots still dominated by Salix had lower overall N; soil accumulation was more associated with dominant species. This highlights the importance of contingency and dispersal in community development. The 100-yr record of these plots, including species composition, spatial relationships, cover, and observed interactions between species provides a powerful view of long-term primary succession.

Coastal margins are important areas of materials flux that link terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Consequently, climate-mediated changes to coastal terrestrial ecosystems and hydrologic regimes have high potential to influence nearshore ocean chemistry and food web dynamics. Research from tightly coupled, high-flux coastal ecosystems can advance understanding of terrestrial–marine links and climate sensitivities more generally. In the present article, we use the northeast Pacific coastal temperate rainforest as a model system to evaluate such links. We focus on key above- and belowground production and hydrological transport processes that control the land-to-ocean flow of materials and their influence on nearshore marine ecosystems. We evaluate how these connections may be altered by global climate change and we identify knowledge gaps in our understanding of the source, transport, and fate of terrestrial materials along this coastal margin. Finally, we propose five priority research themes in this region that are relevant for understanding coastal ecosystem links more broadly.

The study of community succession is one of the oldest pursuits in ecology. Challenges remain in terms of evaluating the predictability of succession and the reliability of the chronosequence methods typically used to study community development. The research of William S. Cooper in Glacier Bay National Park is an early and well-known example of successional ecology that provides a long-term observational data set to test hypotheses derived from space-for-time substitutions. It also provides a unique opportunity to explore the importance of historical contingencies and as an example of a revitalized historical study system. We test the textbook successional trajectory in Glacier Bay and evaluate long-term plant community development via primary succession through extensive fieldwork, remote sensing, dendrochronological methods, and newly discovered data that fills in data gaps (1940s to late 1980s) in continuous measurement over 100+ years. To date, Cooper's quadrats do not support the classic facilitation model of succession in which a sequence of species interacts to form predictable successional trajectories. Rather, stochastic early community assembly and subsequent inhibition have dominated; most species arrived shortly after deglaciation and have remained stable for 50+ years. Chronosequence studies assuming prior composition are thus questionable, as no predictable species sequence or timeline was observed. This underscores the significance of assumptions about early conditions in chronosequences and the need to defend such assumptions. Furthermore, this work brings a classic study system in ecology up to date via a plot size expansion, new baseline biogeochemical data, and spatial mapping for future researchers for its second century of observation.

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Aim: Climate change poses significant challenges for tree species, which are slow to adapt and migrate. Insight into genetic and phenotypic variation under current landscape conditions can be used to gauge persistence potential to future conditions and determine conservation priorities, but landscape effects have been minimally tested in trees. Here, we use Pinus contorta, one of the most widely distributed conifers in North America, to evaluate the influence of landscape heterogeneity on genetic structure as well as the magnitude of local adaptation versus phenotypic plasticity in a widespread tree species. Location: Western North America. Methods: We paired landscape genetics with fully reciprocal in situ common gardens to evaluate landscape influence on neutral and adaptive variation across all subspecies of P. contorta. Results: Landscape barriers alone play a minor role in limiting gene flow, creating marginal geographically-based structure. Local climate determines population performance, with survival highest at home but growth greatest in mild climates (e.g., warm, wet). Survival of two of the three populations tested was consistent with patterns of local adaptation documented for P. contorta, while growth was indicative of plasticity for populations grown under novel conditions and suggesting that some populations are not currently occupying their climatic optimum. Main Conclusions: Our findings provide insight into the role of the landscape in shaping population genetic structure in a widespread tree species as well as the potential response of local populations to novel conditions, knowledge critical to understanding how widely distributed species may respond to climate change. Geographically based genetic structure and reduced survival under water-limited conditions may make some populations of widespread tree species more vulnerable to local maladaptation and extirpation. However, genetically diverse and phenotypically plastic populations of widespread trees, such as many of the P. contorta populations sampled and tested here, likely possess high persistence potential. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | 297 BISBING et al.

Wetland determination relies on assumptions that site hydrologic and edaphic conditions limit plant species to certain environments. For example, using species' wetland indicator status for wetland determination assumes that tolerance of wetland conditions best explains distributional patterns. However, abiotic and biotic factors often interact to create complex plant responses across different environments. To evaluate these interactions, we used a hydrologic gradient in the coastal temperate rainforest of southeast Alaska to (1) quantify the primary determinants of conifer distributions, (2) identify thresholds in environmental factors limiting species' success and (3) assess current wetland indicator status of local conifers (Pinus contorta, Picea sitchensis, and Tsuga heterophylla). Data were collected using a hierarchical sampling scheme and analyzed within a Bayesian framework. Topography and hydrologic regime were the primary determinants of distributional patterns, but species were limited by specific microsite factors. Competitively dominant P. sitchensis occurred where hydrology, pH, and nitrogen were most favorable for establishment, while stress-tolerant P. contorta was competitively excluded from these sites. Tsuga heterophylla occurred across the gradient but took advantage of drier conditions, which promoted biomass accumulation. Tree distributions were limited by the interaction between abiotic and biotic factors rather than by abiotic tolerance alone. This knowledge of local and regional drivers of species' distributions and the relative importance of interacting abiotic and biotic drivers provide critical information for land management and regulation. Wetland delineation procedures can be improved through application of the regional empirical limits identified for plant species, as implemented and addressed in this study. Figure 2. Representative National Wetland Inventory (NWI) ecosystem types in the coastal temperate rainforest of southeast Alaska, including palustrine emergent (a), palustrine scrub-shrub (b), palustrine forested (c), and upland (d) sites.

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Nitrogen (N) limitation constrains plant growth, but complex interactions among species and ecosystems hinder our ability to identify primary drivers of N availability. Hydrologic, biogeochemical, and ecological processes interact spatially and temporally, requiring measurements of N across diverse ecosystem types and as a function of both site conditions and vegetation composition. We measured initial exchangeable and mineralized N along a hydrologic gradient in the Alaskan perhumid coastal temperate rainforest to test a conceptual model of linkages between N availability and landscape, hydrologic, and ecosystem characteristics in temperate forests. Mineralization was closely associated with inorganic N concentrations. Inorganic N as NH4+ generally increased with increasing depth to groundwater but was strongly determined by plant–water interactions. Exchangeable and mineralized N were closely linked to tree species, forest biomass, and hydrologic regime regardless of ecosystem type. The emergence of tree species as indicators of N cycling highlights the effect that species have on nutrient dynamics, while the trend of increasing inorganic N with increasing soil saturation points to the role of hydrology in driving N availability. Our research quantified N dynamics for an understudied, yet critical, system and provides a framework for exploring feedbacks among soil saturation, forest composition, and nutrient cycling in temperate forests.