Center for Forest Ecology (University of Minnesota)
November 17, 2022
Amount Requested$10,000.00
Green Hall, 1530 Cleveland Ave. N.
St.Paul, Minnesota 55108
Lee E. Frelich
Director
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- Species Conservation
Program Support
Science for stewardship and sustainability of forests
$10,000.00
$8,500.00
Yes
The Center for Forest Ecology is leading a research program on invasive earthworms (European earthworms, and most recently, jumping earthworms from Asia) that, combined with climate change and forest loss/fragmentation, threaten the diversity of native forest plants in Minnesota and similar temperate forests in the Great Lakes region of northeastern North America. We are also starting a new initiative to examine carbon storage in forests, using old growth as a baseline to compare with second growth forests, which presumably will eventually store as much carbon as old growth.
Benefit to human society in general, also information to help forest managers make decisions
Minnesota, although results are applicable to forests throughout the Great Lakes region
1. Compare diversity of native plants in old growth remnants and second growth Big Woods forests (sugar maple, basswood and red oak forests in southern MN).
2. Compare diversity of native plants in the Big Woods in areas infested and not infested with jumping worms.
3. Compare carbon storage in old growth and second growth Big Woods forests.
1. We have completed most of the field work on plant diversity in second growth and old growth forests and will use additional funding to finish this, analyze the data and write a scientific paper with the results.
2. We will finish the field work, analyze data on jumping worm impacts and write a scientific paper with the results.
3. Similarly to goals 1 and 2, finish the field work on carbon storage, analyze the data and write a scientific paper with the results.
For all three goals, getting the papers submitted to peer-reviewed journals, and hopefully accepted for publication, along with publicizing the results in outreach to the public via news media and presentations, will be the measures of success.
01/01/2023
12/31/2023
We had funding from the Legislative-Citizens Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) and Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Plants and Pests Center (MITPPC) at the University of Minnesota which has ended or is coming to an end soon. These grants allowed us to get much of the work on old growth and second growth comparisons, and jumping worm versus no jumping worm comparison largely completed. Olseth Family Foundation funding will help us to complete these projects. We have recently started collaboration with Forest Carbon Works (FCW), a private company that is interested in carbon storage in forests, and we expect a new grant from that company to start during 2023 (final approval is pending as of late November 2022), which would cover this new initiative, however, it will not cover the Big Woods comparison of carbon in old growth and second growth--we need to complete that with other funding.
Given that we had two other sources of funding (which ended during 2022 or end during 2023) which allowed us to get started during 2021 and 2022, we can get these activities completed by the end of 2023.
Unapproved