Classification of the Winter Habitats of the White‐Tailed Deer in Northern Wisconsin Based on Forest Ordination

Abstract

In making this classification, 258 stands were used. The stands were natural forests at least 15 acres in area and free from serious disturbance from fire or cutting during the lifetime of the existing dominant trees. The data were obtained by personnel of the Plant Ecology Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin (Christensen 1954). These forest stands were classified into the three following types: (1) habitats with low deer populations during winter, (2) habitats with high deer populations during winter, and (3) forest stands with essentially no deer during the winter. The winter habitats in northern Wisconsin are areas called deer yards where deer concentrate year after year. The relative deer populations were determined by the degree of browsing the vegetation had received in the winter months during recent years. Of the 258 stands, 198 were concentration areas of deer during the winter. There were 79 stands with high deer populations and 119 with low populations. Sixty stands were not winter habitats. Information on numbers, sizes, and species of trees was obtained in each stand by the random pairs or the quarter methods (Cottam and Curtis 1956). The summation of relative density, relative frequency, and relative basal area provided an importance value expressing the relative importance of each species in the canopy of each stand. Brown and Curtis (1952) constructed an ordination for the upland forests, and Christensen et al. (1959) constructed one for the lowland forests. Curtis (1959) combined these two ordinations into one composite ordination that ranges through wet, wet-mesic, mesic, drymesic, and dry forests. These forests are described in detail in the above references. The position of each stand in the ordination is based on its compositional index which is in turn derived from the composition of the stand.