Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-06672-4
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Funding
- Chaire de Recherche Industrielle CRSNG-Universite Laval en Sylviculture et Faune (DF)
- NSERC Discovery Grants
- Fonds de recherche du Quebec - Nature et technologies
- Ministere des Forets, de la Faune et des Parcs
- Canada Economic Development
- Conseil de l'Industrie Forestiere du Quebec
- Federation Canadienne de la Faune
- World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Aboriginal Fund
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Primary production can determine the outcome of management actions on ecosystem properties, thereby defining sustainable management. Yet human agencies commonly overlook spatio-temporal variations in productivity by recommending fixed resource extraction thresholds. We studied the influence of forest productivity on habitat disturbance levels that boreal caribou - a threatened, lateseral ungulate under top-down control - should be able to withstand. Based on 10 years of boreal caribou monitoring, we found that adult survival and recruitment to populations decreased with landscape disturbance, but increased with forest productivity. This benefit of productivity reflected the net outcome of an increase in resources for apparent competitors and predators of caribou, and a more rapid return to the safety of mature conifer forests. We estimated 3-fold differences in forest harvesting levels that caribou populations could withstand due to variations in forest productivity. The adjustment of ecosystem provisioning services to local forest productivity should provide strong conservation and socio-economic advantages.
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