Moose Foraging Strategy, Energetics, and Ecosystem Processes in Boreal Landscapes

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Abstract: PI-PASTOR: Individual species of animals or plants can produce effects which are strongly manifest at the ecosystem or landscape level. The population dynamics of such organisms, or the elimination of such species, can have dramatic ecosystem impacts. Such an animal with such a strong ecological footprint is the moose. This project uses state-of-the-art tracking technology linked to a global positioning system (GPS) to study the effects of moose at Voyageurs National Park, MN. The project studies the energetic balance of individual moose, the effect of moose on plant species distribution, the animal's effects on soil nutrient cycling, and develops a simulation model to study foraging strategy of moose and the impact of moose on landscape patterns. This research is valuable because it links behavioral and population studies with ecosystem and landscape level responses. The interfaces between these disciplines often do not overlap, although the two-way interaction between population biology and ecosystems ecology is often acknowledged. Three components of the research are especially well formulated and planned. First, the animal tracking work provides the detail necessary to examine animal behavior, foraging strategy, and spatially-explicit landscape effects. Second, the simulation model quantifies the impacts of this large grazing animal and may find application with numerous other large herbivores. Third, the research addresses animal linkages to processes such as nutrient cycling and decomposition in addition to structural components of ecosystems such as plant community distributions.