Abstract
Although grazing was a part of calcareous fens’ disturbance regimes, few studies have examined the impact of grazing release in these systems, and managers are reticent to experiment with restoring grazing for management purposes. Here I describe vegetation, edaphic, and hydrologic differences in a Wisconsin calcareous fen between areas long-protected (since 1987) from cattle grazing and those protected in 2011, 2.5 years before the study. Vegetation surveys found that the long-protected areas had significantly lower floristic quality, fewer rare and specialist species, and more woody-plant encroachment than areas abandoned in 2011. Interviews with a farmer and air-photo interpretations suggested that vegetation changed in the protected areas around the time of abandonment. Known edaphic and hydrologic drivers of vegetation change in fens (volumetric water content, electrical conductivity, nutrient availability) could not account for the vegetation differences between the two areas. Site histories found no events accounting for these vegetation differences other than grazing. These results suggest that grazing release led to increased shrub encroachment, decline in floristic quality, and-possibly- a decline in specialist and rare species.
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Data availability
The data are embargoed due to the presence of NHI-listed species. Once cleared with WDNR NHI, data will be made available to all reasonable requests to the author.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. John Harrington for providing comments on this manuscript. Glen Anderson provided much needed site-history information. Peter Deurkup and Thomas Meyer (both WDNR) facilitated site-history-data collection. Funding was provided by the WDNR.
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Funding was provided by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) in a grant awarded to the author.
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Bart, D. Vegetation changes associated with release from cattle grazing in a WI calcareous fen. Wetlands Ecol Manage 29, 67–79 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-020-09767-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-020-09767-4