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The mobile forest
You get this download absolutely free. This offer is only for personal or educational use. Are you looking for this image for commercial use or for the media? Please contact us at beeld@ark.eu
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The mobile forest
By far the majority of young tree and shrub species grow more easily outside the forest than within it, due to competition for light and browsing by roe deer and red deer. As the forest ages, an increasingly limited number of shade-loving species therefore dominate. They regenerate in small clearings and sometimes even beneath their own canopy. This only stops when a catastrophe clears the forest on a large scale, giving other species another chance. The newly opened area acts as a magnet for deer, bison, cattle and other large grazers, which are drawn to the abundance of food. All these species act as a brake on forest development, allowing a semi-open mosaic landscape to develop over a longer period. Through this combination of forest growth in one place and forest clearance in another, the forest, as it were, wanders through the landscape.
In the drawing ‘The mobile forest’, ARK illustrator Jeroen Helmer captured the natural mechanisms of the forest.