Community

Ecotone

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published January 18, 2016 at 9:00 AM EST

The term "ecotone" can be defined as a transition area between two adjacent ecological communities. It usually has some common characteristics of each bordering community and often contains species not found in either of the two. Ecotones exist at different scales. It may be the edge of your back yard where it butts up against a bayou or patch of woods. It can be a 20-mile wide strip that separates the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains from the Great Plains or the northern evergreen forests from the tundra.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley