NU Biology students helping to restore Newfoundland forests
(l to r) Brianna Dumas, Samantha Gauthier, Lauren McLaren and Katie Britton who collected data for McLaren's Honours Thesis.
A group of Biology students from Nipissing University recently got the chance to spend 10 days in western Newfoundland studying the impact of moose foraging behaviour on the ability of forests to naturally regenerate following disturbance.
The students were accompanied by Dr. Peter Nosko, associate professor of Biology/Environmental Science. Dr. Nosko has been working with Biologists at Newfoundland’s Gros Morne National Park on the problem of forest regeneration failure due to the large moose population. Moose densities there have been the highest in the world, resulting in only a quarter of the forested landscape being able to regenerate after a disturbance. If an outbreak of spruce budworm, for example, kills mature trees, there are no saplings in the understorey to replace the forest canopy due to intense selective browsing by moose.
As part of her honour’s thesis, student Lauren McLaren is examining how physical, chemical and biological factors associated with individual balsam fir saplings influence whether a moose chooses to browse that particular sapling. Generally, large herbivores tend to avoid evergreen species such as fir; however in Newfoundland, balsam fir accounts for more than 90 per cent of the moose winter diet. Not all saplings are vulnerable, however; moose will strip one fir sapling and leave an adjacent sapling untouched. Understanding how ecological neighbourhoods influence moose browsing behaviour will help Park managers in their efforts to restore the forests of Gros Morne National Park.
Nipissing students will return to Newfoundland in late August for the annual Biology Field Camp and where student Brianna Dumas will collect data for her honours thesis, examining the degree to which forests in Gros Morne National Park are recovering following a seven-year period of moose population control through hunting, a drastic measure not normally allowed in a National Park.
The work of students McLaren and Dumas is supported by a Talon Research Assistantship from Nipissing University.