Facilitation of Plant-Plant Interference by Herbivory in the Allegheny Hardwood Forest, Pennsylvania, USA: A Vegetation Management Problem

Advance seedlings are the primary source of regeneration in Prunus-Acer Allegheny hardwood stands in Pennsylvania, USA. Most stands lack adequate numbers of advance seedlings. Research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s showed that this was due to herbivory by whitetailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus virginianus (Boddart)) and plant-plant interference from ferns, gasses and sedges, and shade-tolerant hardwoods. Effects of deer density and forest cutting on vegetation development were evaluated on four 65-ha sites for 10 years in a large enclosure where deer were maintained at 0, 4, 8, 15, and 25 animals/km². At each site 10% of the-area was clearcut, 30% was thinned, and 60% remained uncut. Deer density affected advance regeneration abundance, height, and species compositionthrough direct removal of seedlings and facilitation of plant-piant interference between the ferns, grasses and sedges, shade-tolerant hardwoods and seedlings of commercially desirable Allegheny hardwood species. Vegetation observed in uncut, thinned, and clearcut stands is the result of an interaction between herbivory and plant species response to light. This article was written by Stephen B. Horsley in Popular Summaries from Second International Conference on Forest Vegetation Management. The conference has held March 21-24, 1995 in Rotoru, New Zealand.

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