The acceptable performances of sheep and goats during spring were offset during summer, especially in the case of sheep, as the available green foliage was reduced.
Biomass estimates were divided into two sets: (1) the annual foliage available from the entire floodplain overstory canopy, and (2) the annual foliage overhanging the stream, which likely contributes leaf litter directly to the creek each year.
The health of the livestock depends on the quality of the foliage available to the animals.
(1.1) Here N is the spruce budworm population density, (r_{B}) is the linear birth rate of the budworm and (K_{B}) is the carrying capacity which is related to the density of foliage available on the trees.
Practices involved in this case to make fodder foliage available to livestock did not match the specific cycle of harvesting we describe here, but were rather based on tree species choices and on the perceived immediate leaf availability.
When asked about their milk yield, all participants agreed that sheep are producing less milk these days due to insufficient land and foliage available for grazing, or a lack of plant diversity, or some combination of both.
There is also the possibility that unmown plots in our experiment were more greatly affected by herbivory when all surrounding meadows were mown and did not have any foliage available to herbivores.
At all four sites, the shift in CDL (Table 4) will extend the reproductive activity of beetles later into the season (Table 5) and enable them to better utilize locally available host plant foliage and temperatures permissive for continuous development.
A collection of lichen images is available through the Virtual Foliage page at the University of Wisconsin.
We are using satellite readings called the Normalized Differen[ce] Vegetation Index to calculate the level of greenness and how much foliage is available in an area.
The beetles re-colonize the plantations again in the spring when the plants have re-sprouted after harvest and, thus, when foliage is available.
