Climate-ready woodlands: A resilience toolbox
Emily Dombeck, University of Minnesota Extension; Angela Gupta, University of Minnesota Extension; Anna Stockstad, University of Minnesota Extension
From demands for recommendations for climate-resilient and pollinator-friendly tree species, University of Minnesota Extension Forestry recognized the need for a statewide, regionally-specific resource that addresses the complexity of stewarding resilient forest ecosystems in a changing climate. The 200,000+ woodland stewards1 in Minnesota each have unique goals and values for the woodlands that they care for, and may feel paralyzed to implement resilience strategies due to the lack of resources to combat the feelings of loss, grief, and hopelessness over the changing climate. To empower hope and agency in woodland stewards, UMN Extension Forestry developed and updated the Climate-Ready Woodlands program in 2023 and 2024, respectively. This program builds on the principle of rewilding2 to create resilient, self-sustaining, future-adapted ecosystems by developing: 33 region-specific lists of climate-ready native tree species, climate-ready native plant species, and vulnerable native tree species to manage using refugia strategies; three ongoing participatory science projects to identify and monitor near-native (migration potential) tree species that could perform well in Minnesota’s future climate for each of the 11 ecoregions; and statewide workshops delivered through Extension and partner organizations to engage and empower woodland stewards to implement these recommended practices.
The Climate-Ready Woodlands program addresses the spectrum of adaptation strategies for forest ecosystems, ranging from nurturing vulnerable species to promoting species that are predicted to be climate-resilient. The Climate-Ready Woodlands team was especially careful to avoid promoting value judgements of tree or plant species due to their predicted climate resilience, as well as to avoid the “climate winners versus losers” framing. To recognize that all species have ecological and cultural value, this program not only includes recommendations of climate-ready native tree and plant species, but also suggestions to care for native tree species that may be more vulnerable to climate change or critical forest health threats (e.g., emerald ash borer, butternut canker, etc.).
By addressing the lack of a statewide resource for climate-resilient tree and plant species recommendations, this program provides a highly relevant and applicable research-based, peer-reviewed resource to woodland stewards across Minnesota. These 33 region-specific lists were developed using tree species climate response data from the MN Department of Natural Resources and USDA Tree Atlas, and this complex data was analyzed for all tree species in all of the forested native plant communities of the state. To account for the lack of robust climate response data for understory plants, the team developed a methodology to use current native range as a proxy for modeled response data for understory plants in all forested native plant communities. Faunal associations were also recorded for all tree and plant species (376 species) to highlight the immense wildlife benefits of these species. Following a multi-month review process with colleagues at the MN DNR and USDA Forest Service in 2024, major program updates were implemented that included recommendations of vulnerable tree species to manage using climate refugia and the expansion of narrative content for each of the state’s eleven ecoregions.
2024 was a year of significant program evolution and expansion. Partnerships with UMN on-campus faculty have resulted in a grant from the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources to fund the research and outreach on climate-ready, near-native tree species in urban spaces. A large donation from a program participant also funded the planting of these near-native species to study short- and long-term survival in an experimental setting on the UMN campus in collaboration with on-campus faculty. Through online and in-person workshops across Minnesota, this program has reached over 1,200 stewards in the last 1.5 years. Based on post-workshop surveys, participants are extremely likely (4.3/5.0) to implement recommendations from the Climate-Ready Woodlands program in their own woodlands.
The Climate-Ready Woodlands participatory science projects incorporated all aspects of participatory science, ranging from question formation to data distribution. Participant-generated concerns led to two research questions: 1) if near-native species will survive in Minnesota today, and 2) if near-native species will become invasive. In April 2024, two participatory science projects launched to help answer these questions: Tree Tracker, using iNaturalist to crowdsource location data for near-native species in Minnesota today, and Tree Steward Journal, using Google Docs to empower participants to complete a semi-structured journal about near-native tree stewardship with questions about signs of invasiveness.
Between early April and late October, 148 volunteers committed to this project. Early results of these participatory science efforts include: 31 of 56 migration potential species are now included in iNaturalist to help assess the distribution, density and survivability of these species, and two observations suggest wildlife use of these migration potential species. One participant stated “It is so absolutely cool to be able to see something grow from a seed into a beautiful tree! I would even enjoy getting them started and giving them away to encourage people to give it a try. I really do believe that we can make a difference if we try.”
The evolution of this program has resulted in productive conversations with natural resource professionals on climate resilience and adaptation, assisted migration, and the framing by which we define native species. We have presented this program at several national and international conferences and have found no similar programs at other institutions, demonstrating the unique methodology and programmatic delivery. Therefore, significant opportunity exists to partner with other Extension institutions to replicate this program across the eastern U.S. and beyond.
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1 USDA Forest Service. 2021. Family forest (10+ acres) ownership characteristics: Minnesota, 2018. Res. Note NRS-282. Madison, WI: U.S.Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station. 2p. https://doi.org/10.2737/NRS-RN-282.
2 Carver, S., Convery, I., Hawkins, S., Beyers, R., Eagle, A., Kun, Z., Van Maanen, E., Cao, Y., Fisher, M., Edwards, S. R., Nelson, C., Gann, G. D., Shurter, S., Aguilar, K., Andrade, A., Ripple, W. J., Davis, J., Sinclair, A., Bekoff, M., … Soulé, M. (2021). Guiding principles for rewilding. Conservation Biology, 35(6), 1882–1893. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13730
