Moose (Alces alces) and Hare (Lepus canadensis) at Isle Royale National Park

Jordan, Peter

An ERSI Geodatabase created to document the moose and hare research conducted at Isle Royale National Park. The current Geodatabase contains data from 1980 through 2004. Data from 1936-1980 will be added. At Isle Royale National Park, an island-wide sampling grid was tailored to describe and monitor key ecological variables in upland communities with emphasis on the dynamics of moose herbivory. Comprising 631 fixed sampling points, the system affords representative sampling of biotic measures over the entire region occupied by the island’s moose — essentially all of Isle Royale’s terrestrial landscape including near off-shore islands plus ephemeral or very shallow wetlands. Our time-linked data recorded regularly at fixed points provide an excellent opportunity to analyze a wide array of ecological trends over a number of decades.Our studies have been guided by three primary ecological objectives: 1) To estimate numbers and distribution of moose and snowshoe hares, 2) To measure production of forage plants and their responses to cropping by herbivores — primarily moose, and 3) To document the structure of the upland woody vegetation and illustrate how successional trends have been impacted by moose for more than two-thirds of a century.