Ecological succession is a natural process that changes the species structure of a community over time. Eventually, it'll lead to a steady state known as a climax community. Now, you could think of the steady state almost as the community that succession was building towards. Succession can come due to natural processes or unnatural ones. You can see here the remains of a forest after a fire, and after some succession, that area will start looking like this as, you know, the species structure changes, and for example, we get this ground cover back.
Now, primary succession is a type of succession that occurs when a new substrate is formed or exposed. So usually, this will happen when glaciers retreat and expose rocky earth underneath, or volcanoes erupt making a fresh lava flow that will harden. This can also be achieved by floods and landslides. Primary succession is going to occur when this new substrate is exposed, it's devoid of life, and then life and organisms colonize it. So it's going to start out rocky, with nothing, and you're going to need stuff like lichen to help break down some material and create some soil. And eventually, the soil will build up, and you'll be able to support more and more organisms until you'll eventually reach some type of climax community.
Now, secondary succession is when a previously inhabited area, not like the start of a primary succession, which is a completely barren area, is colonized by new organisms after a disturbance. Secondary succession requires some type of disturbance, like that image at the top of the page we saw. This disturbance can be something like a fire. It can also be man-made. These mean human disturbances. For example, deforestation can lead to secondary successions. And basically, what will happen during the secondary succession is what we see charted out here. The first row is just showing the destruction, which leads to essentially the starting point for the succession. From there, organisms will colonize, and eventually, a new sort of climax community will regrow.
So with that, let's go ahead and flip the page.