Research Features

Ongoing land stewardship efforts at the U of M Cloquet Forestry Center are featured in the short film Rooted in the Future (10min). The film highlights various ways forest landowners and resource managers can engage in forest stewardship. Lane Johnson, CFC Research Forester, offers perspective on the importance of prescribed fire within northern forest ecosystems. Unique visuals from summer 2023 timber harvests at CFC are also included in the film. The commercial thinnings shown were designed to prepare sites for future prescribed burns in collaboration with the Fond du Lac Band. The film was produced by Dovetail Partners as part of their Minnesota Fire Adapted Communities initiative.

Measuring and managing forest carbon stocks is a key approach to lessening the effects of human-induced climate change. Forests sequester more carbon annually than any other land use and have the potential to uptake carbon released through energy production, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry. But how can we measure, with certainty, the carbon stored in our forest lands? Ethan Emick, a Master's student and research associate working with Assistant Professor Chad Babcock in the UMN Department of Forest Resources, explains their recent efforts to inventory carbon stocks at the CFC using a fusion of forest data.

Mara McPartland, PhD candidate in the U of MN Department of Geography, Environment, and Society explains in our Spring 2021 research feature what she's learning from her doctoral research in northern Minnesota. Mara is using tree-ring data collected from two study areas in northern Minnesota to reconstruct local-to-regional climate histories. The goal of her research is to further our understanding of paleoclimate, and to provide tools to public policy makers in planning for a range of future climate change scenarios.

Jalene LaMontagne's lab at DePaul University is studying variation in white spruce cone production at the Cloquet Forestry Center.

Mike Schrage, Wildlife Biologist for the Fond du Lac Band, describes current efforts to better understand wolf ecology on the Fond du Lac Reservation. The Otter Creek Pack at the Cloquet Forestry Center serves as a case study. Niganawaabamaanaanigingiw Ma'iinganag Wolf Monitoring on the Fond du Lac Reservation 

Zach Smith, a graduate student in the UMN Department of Entomology, describes his Master's research in ;Exploring ecological interactions between mountain pine beetle and Minnesota’s native bark beetles

Mat Lochner explains what biochar is and how it could be used to improve the productivity of Minnesota's forest lands. 

Lichens and mosses and liverworts, oh my! Abby Glauser shares about a recent survey of lichens and bryophytes across Minnesota.