Natural Ecological Processes
- Abiotic processes
- Wind (transport of soil, blowing down trees: making open spots in the forest and holes and heaps for varied micro habitats)
- Water: streams, waves, flooding, ice, snow – including hydrological impact, flood mitigation, water table maintenance
- Fire
- Avalanches
- Geology: minerals and salt impact – including soil and water composition + richness
- Climate
- Biotic processes
- Wildlife
- Herbivores (large and small)
- As food for carnivores, carrion eaters/scavengers, dung eaters etc.
- Seasonal/diurnal migration & population dynamics
- For natural management
- Grazing & browsing
- Tree bark stripping
- Manuring
- Dam building, wetland creating (beaver)
- Burrowing (rabbits), rooting (wild boar)
- Seeding (squirrel, jay)
- Cleansing (filtration from sedges, dam oxygenation)
- Carnivores
- Prey-predator relationship: equilibrium densities for a balanced ecosystem
- Managers of healthy prey populations
- Indirect impact on vegetation and processes (via effect on prey)
- Scavangers (large and small)
- Disease – vectors including bark beetle, moth, fungus
- Genetic selection and evolution, diversity
- Reproduction, migration internally and repopulation of external areas
- Adaptation, resilience (eg in response to climate change, alien species impact)
- Herbivores (large and small)
- Habitats/flora
- Natural succession to climax vegetation
- Habitat mosaics determined by natural dynamics
- Healthy and diverse ecotone functioning
- Food source provision
- Shelter, bedding, medicinal use
- Genetic selection and evolution, diversity
- Reproduction, spread internally and repopulation of external areas
- Adaptation, resilience (eg in response to climate change, alien species impact)
- Large trees needing a long development period to fulfill ecological potential
- Natural cycles
- Sequestration, storage, emission of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane
- Carbon – availability of dead biomass (trees, reeds, grasses) as base for microbiotic activity and invertebrates in the foodchain
- Nitrogen
- Other elements
- Wildlife
Key principles and indicators for proper functioning of natural processes:
- Scale – large enough to permit as full a range of processes as possible to function
- Abiotic: room for the water, fire and wind processes
- Biotic: especially on the level of meta-populations: “key (steering) species”, facilitating viable gene pools, enabling migration and adaptation
- Self-contained so far as possible – including water sources, habitat ranges
- Influence from external influences (pollution, alien species, human impact) minimal
- Highest species variability and broadest age structure within species that can be permitted by local geography