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Primary Forest And Secondary Forest Essay

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Introduction:

Skaneateles forest is cultivated land located in Onondaga County, New York, United States. Primary forest and secondary forest are two major groupings of land in Skaneateles forest. Primary forests are a forest that is untouched by man and the ecological processes were not disturbed. While secondary forests are a land that was agriculturally used and the ecological processes were disturbed. According to Michael Hough, the decline in agriculture led to broad agricultural abandonment (Hough, 2000). Since agriculture is a huge part of our diet more land to be put to agricultural use. Considering the primary forest was undisputed by man, the pH of the soil may be higher than the secondary forest. However, the secondary forest has been used for agriculture multiple times, which steer the soil to be too acidic, this causes seed in the secondary forest not to grow as fast as the seeds in the primary forest (Vellend, 2003). The primary forest has older trees that are longer and bigger than the secondary forest. The primary forest also has plants that are very diverse compared to the plants in the secondary forest. One can distinguish the differences between primary and secondary forest by simply observing the trees and its canopy. Canopy height measures how far above the ground the tree is. Primary forests had an average change in height that was 4.9cm more than in secondary, variance in the primary forest can be related to more diversity (Kromer, 2016). Photon Flux

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