After a fire the grass is back within a few seasons, because the soil and the seed bank survived. On freshly cooled lava the clock runs many times slower: lichens and mosses have to build soil from nothing at all. Over the thousand years that follow, biomass, species diversity and soil fertility all climb together through five successive stages. A pond takes an entirely different road, silt and plant litter filling the water until it shallows into marsh and finally into grassland.
After a fire the grass is back within a few seasons, because the soil and the seed bank survived. On freshly cooled lava the clock runs many times slower: lichens and mosses have to build soil from nothing at all. Over the thousand years that follow, biomass, species diversity and soil fertility all climb together through five successive stages. A pond takes an entirely different road, silt and plant litter filling the water until it shallows into marsh and finally into grassland.
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