View article

Assisted migration is a promising silvicultural tool that could promote the sustainability of forest ecosystems and ecological services in the context of climate change. Assisted migration plantations, however, could be at a high risk of failure when mammalian herbivores (eg, deer and hares) are abundant. Here, we developed an approach based on chemical content to predict the susceptibility to browsing of translocated seedlings. First, we determined which chemical compounds would be appropriate proxies of susceptibility. Second, we analyzed the chemical content of eight North American species selected for an assisted migration plantation and determined the relative susceptibility to herbivores of species and geographic provenances within species. We compared the ranking to browsing reported in the literature. For six species out of eight, our susceptibility rankings were congruent with information available in the literature. With this study, we provide a tool that could guide managers in species and provenance choices for assisted migration when contending with a high risk of browsing.