98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

FT 1

CANCELLED An Extreme Fire Event in the Border Lakes Region of Northern Minnesota: Ecosystem Impacts and Management Implications of the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire On the Superior National Forest (OVERNIGHT TRIP)

NOTE: This is an overnight trip which will depart the morning of Saturday, August 3 and return the afternoon of Sunday, August 5. In August 2011, the Pagami Creek Fire (PCF), a high-severity, lightning-caused wildland fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), burned 38,000 hectares and became the largest fire in the BWCAW since 1894. Participants will visit the southern flank of the fire where it burned beyond the wilderness boundary. The PCF and other recent broad scale natural disturbances are the focus of numerous research projects addressing ecological and management implications of natural disturbance and climate change in the near-boreal forest landscape. Participants will visit several sites within the fire area inside and outside the BWCAW and an adjacent unburned area. Brian Sturtevant (USFS) will provide an overview of research measuring variation in fire severity, its effects on carbon, nitrogen, and mercury within the soil and forest floor, and scaling these effects using pre and post-fire remote sensing. http://nrs.fs.fed.us/disturbance/fire/extreme fire_effects_mn/. Bruce Anderson (Superior NF) will relate the PCF disturbance to monitoring results in the Superior National Forest including invasive species and fuel and fire interactions following 1999 Independence Day blowdown event. Lawson Gerdes (MNDNR) will summarize preliminary results of the Minnesota Biological Survey within the PCF and discuss implications of recent broad scale disturbances to the assessment of biodiversity in the Border Lakes region. http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/eco/mcbs/index.html. Dinner and lodging at Vermilion Community College in Ely, with an evening presentation on climate change, shifts in fire frequency and salvage logging. On Sunday morning, the group will visit a Fall Lake research site and learn about the University of Minnesota’s B4WARMED project, a field experiment assessing the effects of artificially warmed sites on establishment, growth, and survival of boreal and temperate tree species. http://cfc.cfans.umn.edu/prod/groups/cfans/@pub/@cfans/@cfc/documents/asset/cfans_asset_277124.pdf.

Before making travel arrangements to Minneapolis, check our website on June 17 for the posting of cancelled field trips.