University of Minnesota researchers hope to use burned areas in northern Minnesota to learn more about how climate change may affect the state’s boreal forest. 

—Photo courtesy of Roy Rich

Research at the Hubachek Wilderness Research Center began fifty years ago, initiated by the husband-and-wife team of Clifford and Isabel Ahlgren. Now the work the Ahlgrens began promises to yield insights into how forests respond to climate change.

“Our understanding of climate change effects on forests is very limited,” says Dr. Peter Reich,  University of Minnesota Regents Professor and F.B. Hubachek, Sr. Chair in Forest Ecology, who has led the research effort since the early 90s. “We haven’t had opportunities to observe natural changes that reflect changes that will occur in the future.”

Founded by  Frank Brookes Hubachek Sr. in 1948 and funded by the Wilderness Research Foundation and a generous private donor, the center lies on 350 acres on Fall Lake near Ely, Minnesota. Like real estate agents say, it’s all about location. And the center has just about the perfect location for forest research.

“It provides ready access to research sites in the BWCAW, in cooperation with the USDA Forest Service,” says Dr. Alan Ek, University of Minnesota professor and head of the Department of Forest Resources.
Dr. Reich says that the center “is situated to give ready access to a range of sites in the Arrowhead region and beyond.”

The center’s land adjoins the BWCAW but is not part of it, a crucial distinction that allows Dr. Reich and others to conduct field climate warming experiments “in a zone expected to be very sensitive to climate change.”

Who are those others? Well, quite a few University of Minnesota scientists. Dr. Reich rattled off a list. “Lee Frelich, Roy Rich, Martin Dovciak, Steve Friedman, Meredith Cornett, Daren Carlson, Terry Serres, and many others over time.”

Among the “many others” are students. Specifically, undergraduates, grad students, and post-docs  from the university’s forestry and related programs and from universities around the country. Some students live at the center. The rest stay at field stations like the Wilderness Canoe Base or at Vermilion Community College.

The members of the varied research group spend their days studying a list of related topics. Dr. Reich offers a cogent summary:  “Direct effects of climate gradients (studying trees from Texas to northern Canada) and of climate change (new experiments in the forest itself); as well as indirect effects of climate on disturbances such as wildfire, windstorms, native and exotic diseases and pests, et cetera.”

In plain English, the researchers of the Hubachek Wilderness Research Center want to accomplish three things:

• learn how forests respond to disturbances such as storms, fires, and diseases;
• learn how temperature changes affect forests;
• figure out how the north woods are likely to respond to different climate change situations.

Dr. Reich explains the goals this way: “By carefully selecting contrasts to observe (e.g. burned vs unburned forest, etc) and by carefully working to understand and predict the likelihood of any such disturbance or change, we will have a much better capacity to predict likely impacts of future changes.”

Frank B. Hubachek, Sr. would be proud.