White spruce seedling demography and browsing by snowshoe hares was measured at 12 locations along the Tanana River, summer 2014

Herbivores have the capacity to modify plant community composition and ecosystem structure and function via browsing. For example, moose and snowshoe hare facilitate succession in Alaska's boreal forest by preferentially browsing early successional species over late successional conifers. Snowshoe hares also eat conifers, including white spruce, and this browsing may affect the pattern of spruce establishment over time. We measured over 800 spruce at 18 locations along the Tanana River floodplain in interior Alaska, USA and demonstrated that the proportion of spruce browsed annually positively correlates with annual hare abundance.