Grazing Legacy Influence Nutrient Content and Dry Matter Digestibility of Five Reindeer Food Plants
2020
Hronskiy, Oleksiy
Herbivores have a significant role in tundra ecosystem composition and processes. They can cause changes of vegetation composition and nutrient content that result in altered palatability of the vegetation and food availability for herbivores. The direct effect of herbivores on plant quality and quantity have been studied in detail, and recent studies have shown that present vegetation composition and soil processes might show legacies of historical grazing a century ago. This raises the question if historical grazing also has a legacy on the palatability of the vegetation. In this study, I investigated if the quality of the vegetation of the Historical Milking Grounds (HMGs) heavily grazed up until a century ago is still under influence a century after the heavy grazing has ceased. I focused on the nitrogen content and digestibility of the vegetation, since these should be two independent measures of food quality which, when evaluated together, should give a good estimate of the quality of the forage.
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