“We’re looking at a great transformation, because, guess what, trees can’t walk as quick as climate change.” Assessing the risk “If we don’t do this - according to the scientists and all the models that I’ve looked at - we’re looking at prairies moving all the way up to Duluth,” Abazs says. To replant that many acres by 2040, the Nature Conservancy predicts it would need 43 million seedlings a year - eight times the current level of production. David Abazs, with the Farm and Forest Growers Cooperative, is recruiting farmers and seed collectors to supply Minnesota forests with a reliable supply of climate-adapted trees. It’s part of a bigger goal to reforest a million acres in the state in the next two decades, and Abazs is recruiting seed collectors and farmers to grow climate-smart trees that will eventually be sold to groups like the Nature Conservancy for planting. “These trees are more resilient and provide a foundation for a continuous canopy of forest as the climate continues to change,” says Abazs, who also helped facilitate a group called the Forest Assisted Migration Project. Her work is the backbone for assisted-migration evangelists like David Abazs at the University of Minnesota Extension.
“There's significantly higher survival and better growth when they are transplanted into a climate that matches where they used to live.”Įtterson says there were no differences in growth or survival of the white pine she planted. Every year, she tracked their progress to figure out if the more-southern population was doing better. She took red oak and bur oak trees from the warmer, southern regions of Minnesota and planted them in the north. Julie Etterson, a researcher at the University of Minnesota Duluth, has been studying whether it works. This kind of “helping hand” is known as forest-assisted migration. “Without a helping hand, I think the forests will see a lot more stresses and mortality.” Trees taken from further south are more adapted to warm temperatures, “so they’re predicted to do better,” Slavsky says. That distance of up to 200 miles is enough to make its genes slightly different from the white pine that grows on the island naturally, Slavsky says. That means the seeds that grew some of the new white pine trees on the island were collected one seed zone south of where they were eventually planted in the Superior National Forest. They will eventually be planted further to the north in Minnesota’s forests. These young red oak trees were grown from acorns that were collected in a location where the trees are better adapted to warmer climates. Giving the forest ‘a helping hand’Įach spring, once the snow has melted from the forest floor, the Nature Conservancy sends an army of workers through northern Minnesota to plant a new generation of trees.Ībout a quarter of the 1.4 million trees the group planted in Minnesota this year were “climate-adapted,” says Laura Slavsky, a resilience forester for the conservation group who was overseeing the work at McDougal Lake. These “climate-smart” trees are the best chance to save the state’s forests from the ravages of climate change, according to researchers and advocates who are trying to plant millions of them in the years ahead. A crew member with the Nature Conservancy plants new climate-adapted trees on an island in Superior National Forest that was struck by fire in 2021. This spring, crews from the Nature Conservancy planted new trees designed to thrive into the future.
Today, it’s easy to see how drought and fire transformed the landscape around McDougal Lake. In northern Minnesota, average low temperatures during the winter have soared more than 7 degrees since 1895. But warmer temperatures, drought and disease are putting stress on the state’s trees. A third of Minnesota is covered in forest, which has lured outdoor enthusiasts for generations and supported native communities for much longer.
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