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Effects Of Cattle Grazing On Woodlands In Central Iowa, Cathy Mabry

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Iowa's forests have undergone a dramatic decline in area since settlement by Europeans. Most of the remaining forests have been degraded by an assortment of human impacts, with cattle grazing the most prominent among them. Using a matched pairs study designed to control for environmental differences among plots, I examined the impact of cattle grazing on the forest understory, canopy trees, and tree regeneration. There were distinct groups of understory species associated with ungrazed and grazed plots. Species associated with ungrazed plots were all native and tended to be perennial herbs with fleshy roots. Ungrazed plots also had species preferring …