Impacts of white-tailed deer on regional patterns of forest tree recruitment

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) had substantial cumulative impacts on patterns of forest tree recruitment across most of northern Wisconsin between 1983 and 2013. The diagram shows the path model used to trace direct and cumulative effects of deer on patterns of sapling recruitment in Acer rubrum, Acer saccharum, and Populus tremuloides over this interval. Deer densities refer to 10-year average estimates from Wisconsin DNR's Sex-Age-Kill model as customized for each of 48 Deer Management Units in northern Wisconsin. Saplings refers to the logged sums of 2.5-5 cm DBH sapling numbers in these species as tallied over matching 10-year intervals from U.S. Forest Service FIA survey data on tree numbers and growth within 13,105 plots in this region. See Fig. 7 and Table 5. Image of deer used with permission by the Integration and Application Network, Univ. of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (ian.umces.edu/imagelibrary/).