Recipient Organization
STATE UNIV OF NEW YORK
(N/A)
SYRACUSE,NY 13210
Performing Department
Environmental & Forest Biology
Non Technical Summary
Deer are among the largest and most impactful herbivores inhabiting the Northeast, and their effects on plants and plant communities have been extensively reviewed (Russell et al. 2001, Rooney and Waller 2003, Rawinski 2016). In forested environments, selective foraging by deer frequently alters stand age structures, renders herb-layer communities susceptible to invasion by non-native plant species; and homogenizes the·total flora by eliminating palatable and browse intolerant phint species (Rooney and Waller 2003, Sage et al. 2003 Eschtruth and Battles 2009a, Kalisz et al. ( 2014). The accumulated changes in forest stands ultimately cascade throughout the ecosystem and can have long-lasting impacts {Pendergast et al. 2016).The mechanisms by which herbivores alter ecosystem structure and function are manifest through selective browsing and grazing on the plant community (Fig. 1). Herbivores remove plant tissues and deposite urine and feces, each of which directly affects net primary productivity (above and below ground) and soil organic matter. Resource selection acts as a filter through which some plant species are retained overtime and others are lost, which can dramatically modify nutrient cycles (Augustine et al. 2003; van der Waal et al. 2011) and soil productivity (Schmitz 2008). Often, herbivores accelerate cycling on nutrient rich sites {Frank et al. 1998), and decelerate cycling on nutrient poor sites (Ritchie et al. 1998). In turn, rates of nutrient cycling can induce reciprocal changes in species composition.Consequently, assessing the legacy impacts of deer hyper-abundance can often be challenging (Royo et al. 2010). Site quality factors, including hiding soil type and depth; impinge heavily on the kinds of impacts likely to be expressed. In general, legacy impacts include one or more of the following: (1) a paucity of advance tree seedling regeneration (Horsley et al. 2003),(2) a ubiquity of interfering vegetation (Sage et al. 2003), (3) the presence of non-native and/or invasive plant species (Eschtruth and Battles 2009a, Eschtruth and Battles 2009b), and (4) a depauperate or degraded herbaceous layer under the forest canopy (Kain et al. 2011, Pendergast et al. 2016). Our primary objective is to complete a comprehensive assessment of the effects of chronic, hyper-abundance of white tailed deer on the ecological conditionof forested stands ofHarriman and Bear Mountain State Parks.Awarded Start Date: 4/1/2018Sponsor: NYS Office of Parks Rec & Historic Preservation
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
100%
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
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Project Methods
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