Science Update

Moose Lake. Photo © Mark White/TNC

Addressing Climate Change in Northeastern Minnesota Forests

In collaboration with the Conservation Biology Institute, The Conservancy hosted a kickoff for a new climate change project on April 21 in Duluth, Minnesota.  Twenty five land managers and scientists from the Upper Great Lakes region participated.

Using climate and forest models, partners will explicitly address how drought and more severe disturbances (e.g., severe fire events and wind-throw) might be influenced by climate change and affect forest ecosystems.  In addition we will explore a variety of management options for adapting forest ecosystems to climate change.  A major emphasis of the project is on developing web-based tools to make climate change modeling data more accessible to land managers, practitioners and other scientists.
 
The work builds on climate modeling recently completed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Conservation Biology Institute and TNC.  The previous project explored also explored scenarios for climate change in northern forests, but a more limited set and at a broader scale.  The first resulting publication is in press at Ecological Applications (Ravenscroft, C., R.M. Scheller, M.A. White, and D.J. Mladenoff. Simulating forest restoration in a mixed ownership landscape under climate change.) Results are summarized below.*
 
Ultimately, TNC and our partners will use results from this project to identify a set of climate adaptation strategies for our conservation programs in northeastern Minnesota.  

Summary of Phase 1:  Simulating forest restoration in a mixed ownership landscape under climate change*.  (Ravenscroft et al.  In Press. Ecological Applications).

• If the climate changes, there may be a trend toward homogenization of forest conditions in northeastern Minnesota due to the widespread expansion of maple dominated systems.
• If the climate changes at a moderate pace, white spruce, balsam fir and paper birch may be extirpated from landscape irrespective of management activity.  Additional losses of black spruce, red pine and jack pine may be expected if climate changes at a faster pace due to higher greenhouse gas emissions.
• If a broad program of restoration management is implemented across the region, retention and conversion of white pine may restrict and  reduce the expansion of maple.
• However, widespread forest loss under high emissions projections illustrates the risks of implementing a management approach designed for a fundamentally different type of forest.
• Given the large uncertainty associated with climate change, ensuring a diversity of species and conditions within forested landscapes may be the most effective means of ensuring the future resilience of ecosystems.

* Phase 1 was funded by TNC’s Rodney Johnson-Katherine Ordway Internal Grants Program, and the Cox Family Fund for Science and Research, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Early progress of this project was covered by Minnesota Public Radio (January 2008)