Native Tree Society BBS

Bob: As I state in one of the videos attached to the web version of the article, with a much warmer climate we will lose the boreal biome in MN, but we will gain a very large savanna restoration opportunity in the boundary waters, savanna currently being the most degraded of all natural ecosystems i...

NTS: The Minneapolis Star Tribune featured climate change research of myself and colleagues Peter Reich, Rebecca Montgomery and Meredith Cornett, as well as others from around MN. We had front page coverage (including a front page picture of my PhD student David Chaffin), with 3 full pages inside. T...

Joe, Randy: Deer browsing is also a problem for tree regeneration, especially in that part of Minnesota (central MN, just north of the Twin Cities). The combination of grass competition and browsing could explain the lack of tree seedling success, but so could either factor by itself. Grasslands on ...

Joe, Rand et al.: The carbon amounts shown are cumulative up to the age indicated on each line of the table. For this site, forest would not invade on its own. With the extremely rich and high pH soils we have in this part of Minnesota, the invasive reed canary grass can permanently dominate. The si...

ENTS: As local organizer of the 2013 Ecological Society of America annual meeting, it was part of my duties to offset carbon emissions for travel of more than 3000 scientists from all over the U.S. and the world to Minneapolis. So, as explained in the ESA blog (link below), I decided to use $5 from ...

Joe and Larry: Probably about 12% of the forested landscape in the Lake States (MN, WI, MI) was red and white pine forest, on sandy loam or rocky soils. Based on the frequency of stand-leveling disturbance, about 55% of that would have been old growth, with multiple ages of pines and very large tree...

ENTS: Recently graduated M.S. student Lane Johnson (Univ of MN Geography) gave me this slab of a red pine from the unlogged forests of the Lac LaCroix area of northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. IMG_0379-small.jpg As Lane put it, this is a 'new decorative element' for my offi...

Will and Kouta: Well, next time I go there, I will have to measure some trees. This trip I was too busy giving presentations and being treated like a king to measure trees. However, I did see some Betula pendula that I estimated visually at 42 m (138 feet), and I don't think the height claims made f...

NTS: Here are some observations and pictures from my recent visit to Estonia, where I gave a guest lecture at the Estonian University of Life Science in Tartu and two presentations at the Forest Ungulate Research Network (FURN) conference at the university's 25,000 acre Jarvselja Forest. Perfectly s...

Bob: I think that most of the enhanced growth caused by increasing CO2 is in the past--the steepest part of the response curve for rate of photosynthesis being from 180-380 ppm CO2, which is the trajectory we have been on since 18,000 years ago. Additional CO2 beyond 380, will result in only a modes...