At around the time that the BSS was established, several controversies existed about how succession took place. One controversy dealt with the nature of the community. At one extreme, tightly unified communities were assumed to be the basis of succession, while at the other, the individual -- but interacting -- species populations were assumed to be the basis of succession. By examining permanent plots through time, the BSS could show whether communities came and went as wholes, or whether populations rose and fell through time based on their individual properties and capacities for interaction.

The second controversy is more subtle, and seems to be the one that most motivated the Buell's. Dr. F. ? Egler, noted ecological gadfly, had proposed that the species that would come to predominate in later successional communities were in fact present right from the start. This "Initial Floristic Composition" hypothesis was in opposition to the dominant assumption that species arrived in succession in order of their dominance. Egler's hypothesis apparently seemed unreasonable to the Buell's and John Small based on their experience. The only sure way to tell, however, was to look at specific permanent plots through time. It is just this design that the BSS employs.

The two controversies have in some ways been solved as a result of the BSS, other permanent plot studies in forests and fields, and judicious use of certain chronosequences and experiments. Consequently, contemporary succession theory incorporates aspects of the extremes of the controversies by recognizing when each of the patterns or processes occur. However, far from obviating the need to continue long-term, permanent plot studies of succession, new motivating questions have emerged that are appropriately examined by the BSS and other such studies. Questions that now rise to the top of the list of motivations for the study include those concerning 1) patterns of species assembly and assortment in time and space, 2) the role of functional groups in succession, 3) the place and significance of invasive exotic species in mid- and late-successional communities, 4) how species life histories and morphologies relate to their invasion and persistence, and 5) the role of episodic events in succession. Succession is driven by a suite of processes that occur to different degrees in all plant and animal communities. Because successional trajectories are so obviously dynamic, they provide a powerful stage for disentangling the web of interactions that characterizes communities and ecosystems.

There was a management rationale behind the abandonment of the fields adjacent to the old-growth Mettler's Woods. Allowing the fields to succeed from the herbaceous plants of agriculture to shrubby communities and ultimately to forest, would buffer the sensitive old woods from the external environment, and perhaps ultimately make a more secure forest environment. Therefore eight of the 10 fields in the BSS are adjacent to the old-growth forest. Other fields on the original property were to be used for demonstration or manipulative research. Manipulations would not be permitted in the old woods, and only sparingly in the fields of the BSS.