• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: aerial survey; Alces alces; browsing; damage; deer; environmental variation; foraging; forest; harvest; hunters ´ observations; herbivore; pattern; pellet group count
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.214.2817; http://diss-epsilon.slu.se:8080/archive/00001586/01/JMnfin0.pdf

ISSN 1652-6880, ISBN 91-576-7381-7 The foraging patterns of large herbivores will affect their impact on structures and functions of ecosystems and on human use of natural resources. The foraging patterns are affected by a multitude of factors, e.g. forage availability, environmental conditions and herbivore density. Furthermore, the importance of these factors has been suggested to vary over temporal and spatial scales. The impact from large herbivores will affect the management actions to fulfil socio-political policies (e.g. regarding damage to forests) and the harvest quotas could be decided from monitoring of animal numbers and damage. However, wildlife managers are often faced with a choice of several available monitoring methods, at varying cost and precision. The aim of this thesis was to improve our understanding of: 1) factors governing the foraging patterns of large herbivores and thereby also the impact on the ecosystem; and 2) performance of survey methods in relation to monitoring cost. The study was performed in south-central Sweden, and moose (Alces alces) in boreal forest was used as a model system. The results suggest that herbivore foraging decisions are scaledependent. The significance of moose density effects, site productivity and diversity among