We'll meet and visit field sites on a range of ownerships near Finland, MN.
Brought to you by SFEC and Minnesota's new Forest Climate Working Group, this will be a field day visiting silvicultural treatments designed at least in part to increase forest resilience and adaptive capacity, alongside more traditional land management objectives. Jason Bushmaker (MN DNR - Forestry), Matt Widen (Lake County), Katie Frerker (NIACS), and Eli Sagor (UMN-SFEC) will discuss climate adaptation strategies in general and as applied on the stands we'll visit.
The focus will be on north shore northern hardwood systems. Across much of the region, these stands have become dominated by red and sugar maple. We'll discuss treatments implemented since about 2011 designed to diversify stand age distributions, reintroduce underrepresented species from the region as well as some assisted migration tests, and diversify stand structures. Our land manager hosts will discuss how they've tweaked conventional treatments to better align with opportunities and concerns related to changes like shorter and milder winters, changing precipitation timing and soil moisture conditions, shifting species ranges, and so on.
We'll also introduce Minnesota's new Forest Climate Working Group, which is still being formed through a collaboration of SFEC, the Northern Institute for Applied Climate Science (NIACS), and the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP).
We'll meet at Tettegouche State Park and caravan to field sites within an hour to 90-minutes away. Our route will include some rough roads, and 4-wheel drive will be needed. Carpool options will be available as needed.
When: November 30 from about 9am to 4pm.
Where: Tettegouche State Park and field sites in the Finland MN area.
Cost: $75 for SFEC members, $140 others. Lunch provided.
Questions? Contact Eli Sagor at or (218) 409-6115 (voice / text)[email protected]