Gwynedd Wildlife Preserve: Restoring an Altered Ecosystem Essay

Gwynedd Wildlife Preserve: Restoring an Altered Ecosystem to Its Original Glory

Structural and Functional Dynamics

The Gwynedd Wildlife Preserve in Pennsylvania is a portion of land that has seen considerable changes over the years due to major structural and functional dynamics that occurred within this ecosystem. The preserve itself is a 234-acre portion of land consisting of meadows, woodlands and wetlands that border the ever-growing suburbs of Blue Bell and North Wales, Pennsylvania (Schuylkill, 2012, p.1). The area's lushness and welcoming appeal led to years of agriculture and development within the area and its immediate surroundings, leading farmers, business owners, and residents alike to flock to the area in and around where the preserve now lies. An area which functioned as a vast landscape for the growth of plan and animal life was now in danger of being picked dry by new human residents. With this influx of people and their relative actions, the area's natural resources found themselves considerably depleted. However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a large parcel of land was donated to the Natural Lands Trust and deemed the Gwynedd Wildlife Preserve in order to ensure that the land would be restored and maintained for many years to come.

Human-Impacted Effects

Human impact in the Gwynedd Wildlife Preserve can be viewed as the single force which considerably altered the area at several different times in history.At the time of the area's donation to the National Lands Trust, the area of the Gwynedd Wildlife Preserve had been long utilized as an active agricultural area for many decades. As such, much of the land's natural woodlands had been cleared, eliminating the richness of the soil that was added to by the presence of this plant life. Additionally, fields which had been cleared of natural growth were planted with crops foreign to the soil, which in many areas of the preserve caused a complete overhaul in the biochemical cycles of the ecosystem. In essentially stripping an area of native plant life and starting fresh with new additions, the chemical dynamics of the acreage was significantly altered, and to this day is in….....