Rocky Mountain Elk Case Study

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In this paper, we would discuss and design a model that will predict elk growth in Oregon, and how growth might be affected by climate changing and food. Therefore, we can manage them in a better way and keep ecology in balance. In the Oregon, there are two major types of elk that distribute into two area mostly, Rocky Mountain elk are on the eastside of the Cascade and Roosevelt elk are on the west side, we will pay more attention on Rocky Mountain elk in this paper. All model revealed density-dependent of population size on growth rates. Our results will give managers of wildlife apartment ideas to regulate populations and prevent harmful effects of overabundance or endangered.
1. Introduction
The elk is one of the largest species within …show more content…
At the same time, hunters have also increased in recent decades. However, calf recruitment has declined in many areas since the 1960s (Johnson and others 2005). In some herds in northeastern Oregon, recruitment is down from 50 calves per 100 females to 20 calves per 100 females. Even though the population of elk increases in Oregon, other states like Idaho or
Washington have declined.
1.2 Factors in Elk population
Adequate habitat for elk have to satisfy two requirements, enough nutrition (food) and security (enough forest to hide and escape from hunters or predators). Nutrition as the most important factor in the population dynamic is considered a density-dependent factor in growth. It tends to stabilize populations by regulating the size of herds (Johnson and others, 2005). If we assume no predators prey on them and unlimited source of food, the population of elk increasing along an exponential growth rate with infinite number. Human activates, like building roads and hunting, unusual weather and predation are considered density-independent factors. They tend to limit the size of a herd without regulating it, and therefore to destabilize population (Gail, 2007).
These factors limited growth of population, and population size could represented by the …show more content…
Also, that effects could extend to many other components of natural and human dominated system (Wang et.al.,2002). For climate changing, growth rate of elk are limited by effects of winter on survival and recruitment (Mech et al., 1987; Post and Stenseth, 1999). So female elk usually give birth in summer to increasing survival rate. On the other hand, if climate warming in summer and winter, it cause problems of overabundance. We would like to create models to predict population of elk within the climate changing.
Here, we analyses potential effects of climate warming on dynamics of elk population. More specifically, we focus on Rocky Mountain elk on the eastside of Oregon and extend our result to other elk and herbivore.
2. Model
2.1 Assumption
Assumption 1. The area we considered which is eastside of Oregon have enough sources of food and nutrition, so we can identify the carrying capacity.
Assumption 2. There will be no significant emigration or immigration of the elk. We do not want emigration or immigration to affect our model.
Assumption 3. There is no difference between individuals such that sex, age, breeding
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