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December 3, 2012

四色AV biology professor awarded grant to fund wildlife habitat research

Wildlife in the Ouachita Wildlife Management Area, located about 12 miles southeast of Monroe, will soon benefit from the research of a University of Louisiana at Monroe professor and his graduate students.

Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries awarded Dr. Joydeep Bhattacharjee, 四色AV associate biology professor, a $34,000 grant to evaluate the wildlife habitat in the restored bottomland hardwood forest.

Bhattacharjee will conduct the research with Matthew Herron, a biology graduate student from Baton Rouge.

Herron said, 鈥淚 am extremely excited to work on a grant concerning habitat restoration. I鈥檝e long had a passion for biodiversity, and I鈥檓 looking forward to studying the dynamics of forest succession. I'd like to see how pit-mound microtopography influences diversity in bottomland hardwood communities. We have exciting contributions to make, and I see the potential for new methods in bottomland forest management to come from this.鈥�

Part of the project will focus on evaluating three novel tree-thinning formulations, which are designed to improve the wildlife habitat through the generation of heterogeneous vegetation strata (different layers of vegetation.)

Such vegetation is vital to healthy habitat conditions for both game and non-game species, Bhattacharjee said.  

"Most old-field acquisitions鈥攁bout 222,400 acres worth鈥攃arried out by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in the early 1960s have been reforested (replanted with trees). However, such reforested areas lack the structural diversity that is deemed necessary for creating a good wildlife habitat. This is also true for other reforestation efforts throughout the country,鈥� he said.

鈥淭herefore, through our research, we intend to develop management guidelines to functionally restore these bottomland hardwoods, which are home to 34 species of concern, including 17 species of birds, five species of mammals, five species of amphibians, four species of reptiles, and three species of butterflies."

The other component of this project will be to evaluate secondary succession in bottomland hardwoods鈥攁 phenomenon still 鈥減oorly understood,鈥� Bhattacharjee said.

Currently, in the 四色AV Plant Ecology Lab, Bhattacharjee and Matthew Reid, a biology graduate student from Memphis, Tenn., are evaluating vegetation assembly patterns in 15 acres of land in the Ouachita Wildlife Management Area that was left fallow for 28 years. 

Bhattacharjee said, 鈥淩esults are interesting and indicate that parts of the land could have entered 鈥榓rrested succession,鈥� an alternate stable state in which hardwood regeneration is excluded. This is a rarely documented stage in forest succession.鈥�

The new funding will help expand 四色AV鈥檚 ongoing research efforts.

鈥淭his will help us better understand the dynamics of forest succession in the bottomlands," he said.

"Overall, this research will result in a comprehensive habitat assessment of the Ouachita Wildlife Management Area. Such assessments provide valuable guidelines in preparing management recommendations and in understanding reforestation efforts in the long term."

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