Rebirth of the Forest
Teams study effects of Boundary Waters disasters

By Becky Beyers

Out of the ashes, green is returning.

Researchers from CFANS spent the summer in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in far northern Minnesota, cataloging the damage done by major forest fires last summer and this past May.

Forest Resources researcher Terry Serres looks closely at emerging plants in the fire-ravaged Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

“The major question we’re looking at is what happens when you have compound disturbances,” says Terry Serres, a Forest Resources doctoral candidate who leads the team of seven student researchers. The 1999 blowdown in the BWCAW took out millions of trees; that event followed by major fires presents a unique opportunity to see how a forest regenerates. This summer’s research is part of an ongoing effort started in 2000 and led by researcher Roy Rich, also of the forest resources department.

The 2006 Cavity Lake fire was one of the largest since the advent of fire suppression nearly a century ago, Serres says. “It’s like a moonscape; all the fuels are on the ground.” At the Ham Lake fire, which burned about 75,000 acres in the U.S. and Canada this spring, the blowdown plus a series of prescribed fires, and then the latest wildfire, creates a very different situation, with herbaceous plants already returning.

“What we’re trying to do this summer is establish a baseline, to catalog the different disturbance histories,” he says. That means visiting specific forest sites and taking measurements to see how much trees and undergrowth have been damaged and how much duff—the decomposing organic matter on a forest floor—has been consumed. “It’s really intense. You have to be productive and also stop when you see something unexpected.

I can sit in the lab all winter and plan, but once we get out in the field, it’s very different. You have to make a lot of on-the-ground decisions.”
The BWCAW’s remote and pristine location creates other challenges. Each day’s work usually begins with at least a 45-minute canoe trip, Serres says. Then there may be a hike to an inland site. In addition, the crew must take care not to accidentally introduce nonnative species.

The researchers work for 10 days and then take 4 days off. When they’re working, they’re together 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They stay in a cabin at a Lutheran youth camp on the Gunflint Trail that had more than 30 structures destroyed in the Ham Lake fire. Because of all that togetherness, student researchers need to have people skills as well as technical and outdoor skills. “We pool our resources in terms of identifying vegetation and damage phenomena and in terms of back-country skills. It’s a good, resilient group,” Serres says.

Data gathered by the researchers will be brought back to the St. Paul campus for analysis this winter. But it’s already clear that even after a few weeks, recovery is under way, Serres says. “It’s just amazing to see how things come back.”