Forests of Northern Minnesota

Forests of Northern Minnesota

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TOPIC: forests of northern MN
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/743348eb8e4d5167?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Fri, Jan 4 2008 7:08 pm
From: Lee Frelich

ENTS:

Just returned from Ely MN in the heart of northern Minnesota's boreal
forest, and a very busy and eventful day. It's always interesting to see
the vast evergreen forests of black spruce, white spruce, balsam fir, jack
pine and red pine dressed in 2 feet of fluffy snow with moose grazing on
saplings of their favorite tree species, mountain ash, mountain maple and
paper birch. It was also nice to see that Thursday's storm did very little
tree damage. An intense low pressure center passed through northern MN
yesterday, and just to its south across Lake Superior, from Duluth MN past
Isle Royale National Park and on to Pukaskwa National Park (about a 250
mile fetch), southwesterly winds howled at sustained speeds of 60 mph for
about 8 hours, leading to a 28 foot significant wave height at the
northeast end of Lake Superior. Apparently winds were only 30-40 mph over
the forest, but were greatly accelerated as they descended from the
Sawtooth Mountains and spilled out over the relatively warm waters of the
still unfrozen lake.

I had been invited to speak at the Northern Minnesota Climate Change Forum,
which drew a standing-room-only crowd at Vermilion Community College
Auditorium in Ely, and was seated on stage with Arctic explorer Will
Steger, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. It
was surprising how much the governor and senator knew about forests and how
well they handled a wide variety of questions from the public and
reporters. Organizers of the Forum and the audience seemed pleased with
what I said, although as usual I disregarded everything I had prepared
ahead of time and made something up microseconds before it came out of my
mouth. Basically I said a warmer climate was allowing more storms, fires
and insects to create a high rate of change in the forest--don't forget
that although the world has seen only 1 degree F of warming, by virtue of
being at a relatively high latitude and the middle of the continent,
Minnesota has warmed by 3-5 degrees, so we are seeing effects that won't
show up in a lot of other places for a few more decades.

Lee

== 2 of 3 ==
Date: Wed, Jan 9 2008 5:02 pm
From: DON BERTOLETTE

Michelle-We have similar issues with moose in Alaska...while it takes a lot of patience and a little bit of training, it turns out that moose are not as jug-headed as we've been led to believe...witness attached image!-Don

== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Thurs, Jan 10 2008 7:52 am
From: "Lee E. Frelich"

Michele:

I have not seen any analyses of moose impact on timber. The studies that
have been done are mostly effects on succession in the forest in reserved
areas such as national parks.

I had a moose that liked one of my permanent mapped plots in the Boundary
Waters, and broke every single paper birch sapling, thus distorting the
successional pathway. On another nearby plot, they didn't break any of the
birch. Now the whole area burned in the Ham Lake Fire, and the moose will
have 75,000 acres of young birch, so they will be supersaturated with food
and have only minor effects.

Moose browsing can be very patchy, they will stay in one preferred area and
break every sapling for years, then suddenly disappear.

Deer are a big factor in MN. There are a lot of areas where oak, pine and
yellow birch cannot be regenerated without fences to keep out the deer.

Lee

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