Ungulate Browsing and Foundation Tree Regeneration in Central New England 2010

Large herbivores are important forest disturbances capable of altering community composition, biodiversity, tree density, successional pathways, and nutrient cycling. The extent to which browsers exert important impacts on forests, however, depends on the intensity and duration of browsing, the palatability and tolerance of the vegetation, available resources to plants, and the scale at which these factors are being investigated. Few studies have examined ungulate impacts at the landscape scale. Since the late-1980s moose have recolonized their pre-historical range in southern New England, joined white-tailed deer to create a potentially important new driver of forest dynamics in the region. Few, if any, studies have looked at combined deer and moose impacts on temperate forests in eastern North America. In the summer of 2010, we initiated a landscape-scale observational study on ungulate habitat use and browsing on foundation tree species (Quercus spp. and Tsuga canadensis) in unlogged forests. Seventy-two forest plots were sampled across several ecoregions in central and western Massachusetts, southern Vermont and New Hampshire and northern Connecticut. Tree seedlings, overstory characteristics, browsing, pellet piles, and shrub densities were sampled; and site attributes such as mean annual temperature and forest fragmentation were examined.