Aspen persistence near the National Elk Refuge and Gros Ventre Valley elk feedgrounds of Wyoming, USA

We investigated aspen (Populus tremuloides) regeneration in the Gros Ventre River Valley, the National Elk Refuge and a small part of Grand Teton Nati onal Park, Wyoming. USA to see if elk (Cervus elaphus) browsing was as dama ging as previously thought. We conducted a landscape-scale survey to assess aspen regeneration across gradients of wintering elk concentrations using 68 randomly selected aspen stands in the 1090 km(2) study area. Forty-four percent of the stands sampled supported some newer regeneration that had re ached the canopy. There were no significant differences of regeneration acr oss elk winter range classification (p = 0.25) or distance from feed-rounds p = 0.96). However, a multiple linear regression found that the concentrat ion of elk was one of several important predictors of successful aspen rege neration (p = 0.005, R-2 = 0.36). Our results suggest that stand-replacing regeneration occurs across the landscape at a variety of elk densities desp ite some trends of reduced regeneration under greater elk concentrations. W e propose that high spatial and temporal variation and scattered patches of successful aspen regeneration characterize aspen persistence between perio ds of episodic regeneration and recruitment.