ecological modelling 202 ( 2 0 0 7 ) 397–409 available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolmodel Ecological processes and spatial patterns before, during and after simulated deforestation George P. Malanson a,* , Qian Wang a , John A. Kupfer b a Department of Geography, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, United States b Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, United States article info Article history: Received 15 February 2006 Received in revised form 16 October 2006 Accepted 6 November 2006 Published on line 29 November 2006 Keywords: Deforestation Fragmentation Habitat Matrix Resilience Simulation abstract Theoretical and applied research on the ecological consequences of deforestation has focused on the remnants of habitat in relative isolation, but recent thinking has theorized more realistic conditions in which the areas of altered habitat are not completely destroyed, in which they recover and the connectivity of the landscape changes, and in which distur- bance regimes play a role. A competition–colonization simulation, in which these primary tradeoffs are represented in a spatially explicit model, is used to explore the consequences of additional aspects of landscape dynamics following deforestation for plant diversity and community structure. The dynamics are analyzed in terms of temporal aspects of com- munity resilience and changes in its spatial pattern. Simulations indicate that the initial degree of habitat alteration has little effect on resilience. Allowing succession to follow disturbance has a strong effect, which differs among species. Adaptation to an ongoing dis- turbance regime, which should improve resilience, is not evident when the disturbance itself continues. Deforestation changes the spatial pattern of the landscape, and species respond differently because of their different dispersal abilities. The species in turn alter the spa- tial pattern. The basic lessons of competition–colonization models for deforestation stand, but the ensured extinction implied by the extinction debt concept is further ameliorated as more realistic pattern–process relations are theorized. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Understanding the effects of forest loss and fragmentation is critical to assessing and mitigating human impacts on species diversity and community composition in forest rem- nants. A central focus of fragmentation research, which has concentrated primarily on pattern and process within habi- tat remnants rather than the surrounding deforested matrix (Fahrig, 2003), has been on how declining forest area and increasing isolation of forest remnants influences both rich- ness and species survival. The expectation (stemming from applications of island biogeography and metapopulation the- ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 319 335 0540; fax: +1 319 335 2725. E-mail address: george-malanson@uiowa.edu (G.P. Malanson). ory; Kupfer, 1995) is that as forests are fragmented, the populations of forest species decline in size and become increasingly isolated from one another, leading to higher extinction rates, lower immigration rates, and lower species richness in remaining forests, although such effects may not be immediately manifested (Tilman et al., 1994). Ongoing, long-term experiments have even resulted in the creation and monitoring of habitat islands to test such hypotheses (Bierregaard et al., 1992; Laurance, 1998; Laurance et al., 1998). Laurance (2002) has also proposed that fragmented forests suffer from hyperdynamism, an increase in the vari- ance of population, community or landscape characteristics 0304-3800/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2006.11.012