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Abstract
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) herbivory has been identified as a major impediment to the survival and growth of forest regeneration in the northeastern United States. As a supplement to direct control of deer densities through hunting, it may be possible for land managers to manipulate habitat and browsing pressure through carefully planned timber harvest. We are developing methods to relate deer habitat use patterns to regeneration condition and complexity across large landscapes. The preliminary research presented here involved development of methodology to efficiently and effectively model deer habitat use patterns across forested landscapes using fecal pellet groups as an activity index. Work was conducted in summer 1997 on the 3,078-hectare West Virginia University Forest (WVUF) in north-central West Virginia and the 3,413-hectare Westvaco Wildlife and Ecosystem Research Forest (WERF) in the south-central portion of the state. Fecal pellet group counts were conducted on geolocated 1.72-meter radius circular plots at an intensity of approximately 1 plot per 2.4 hectares. We used variography to investigate spatial dependence in the data. Deposition patterns were modeled using geographic information systems (GIS) technology and a spatial statistics technique known as 2-dimensional ordinary point kriging. Variography revealed spatial contagion in the WVUF data that could be accurately modeled using this methodology. The resulting interpolated probability map is of high potential value in the long-term monitoring of deer activity patterns across this forested landscape. Results on the WERF indicated that sampling intensity was too coarse to allow modeling of strong localized dependence in the data.
Parent Publication
Citation
Gribko, Linda S.; Hohn, Michael E.; Ford, William M. 1999. White-tailed deer impact on forest regeneration: Modeling landscape-level deer activity patterns. In: Stringer, Jeffrey W.; Loftis, David L., eds. 1999. Proceedings, 12th central hardwood forest conference; 1999 February 28-March 1-2; Lexington, KY. Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS-24. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 293 p
