Influences on food supply from elk abundance and precipitation early in the growing season

Large grazing mammals should negatively affect forage biomass of their food supply, but documentation is lacking in free ranging populations. Furthermore, complications from factors such as weather patterns and spatial heterogeneity might obscure grazing effects on the food supply. We examined influences of Roosevelt elk (Cervus canadensis roosevelti (Merriam, 1897)) abundance and precipitation on forage biomass at two spatial scales; meadows that contained most of the food supply, and sectors nested in meadows. Spatial heterogeneity in forage biomass might also decline with increasing elk abundance. Elk abundance was estimated from population counts and varied 3.9-fold across the 15 years of study in northwestern California, USA. Each January, early in the growing season, we estimated forage biomass in the 50-ha meadow complex used by the elk population. Measures of palatable forage cover and height were taken in 270 ¼ m(2) plots dispersed throughout sectors. These measurements were then related to dried forage biomass. At both spatial scales, elk abundance was inversely, and precipitation was positively related to forage biomass. At the sector scale, analysis of a linear mixed effect model indicated heterogeneity. In some sectors both predictors were related to forage biomass and in other sectors they were not. Heterogeneity was not from uneven elk grazing as elk grazed sectors in proportion to forage biomass. The varied elk abundance–forage biomass relationships across sectors indicated that spatial heterogeneity declined with increasing elk abundance. Detecting relationships between free ranging ungulate populations and biomass of their food supply is not straightforward.