Jennifer Merems

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology

Forests in the western US have undergone a profound transformation over the last 100 years due to chronic fire suppression and a cycle of extensive timber harvest followed by little silvicultural activity. Forested landscapes in this region are now dominated by intermediate age, denser stands of coniferous trees that reduce transmission of light an...

Habitat selection is a critical aspect of a species' ecology, requiring complex decision‐making that is both hierarchical and scale‐dependent, since factors that influence selection may be nested or unequal across scales. Elk (Cervus canadensis) ranged widely across diverse ecoregions in North America prior to European settlement and subsequent eas...

Research-in-progress poster describing research on elk use of perpetually maintained forest openings in Wisconsin

In heterogeneous landscapes, large herbivores employ plastic behavioral strategies to buffer themselves against negative effects of environmental variation on fitness. Yet, the mechanisms by which individual responses to such variation scale up to influence population performance remain uncertain. Analyses of space-use behaviors exemplify this know...

In heterogeneous landscapes, large herbivores employ plastic behavioral strategies to buffer themselves against negative effects of environmental variation on fitness. Yet, the mechanisms by which individual responses to such variation scale up to influence population performance remain uncertain. Analyses of space-use behaviors exemplify this know...

This poster explains my proposed first chapter of my dissertation where I will correlate elk population dynamics to wolf interactions and associated predation risk.