Changing landscape creates uncertain future for Lake Superior

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By Eric Lemke

DULUTH – It doesn’t take an expert to see that the forests are dying along the north shore of Lake Superior. The white spruce, paper birch, and balsam fir are all dying and leaving behind a vastly reshaped landscape and a drastically changed ecosystem.

“You see the dying birch and you can tell something probably needs to be done with this forest,” said Molly Thompson, the coordinator for the Sugarloaf Cove North Shore Stewardship Association. “All of the trees are dying.”

The Sugarloaf Cove Stewardship Association is one of a smorgasbord of northeastern Minnesota collaborations trying to stem the tide of a quickly changing landscape.

The forests along Lake Superior are a far cry from what they were 200 years ago. And now, due to global warming and other anthropogenic sources, the forests are under threat of change once again.

You don’t have to look too far back into the history to discover that the landscape was once dominated by soaring old-growth forests plump with pines and cedars. Herds of caribou once roamed the wooded hills, and the forests were ripe with juneberry and bush honeysuckle.

The late 1800s brought white settlers to the area. Logging, mining, and forest fires decimated the old stands of red pine and white cedar. With few old pines and cedars to provide seeds, most of these trees did not return along the shore. With the forests now devoid of the old conifer trees, they were instead heavily populated by paper birch and quaking aspen.

It’s these forests that are now under threat.

“The birch are getting old,” Thompson said. “Where these trees should be turning into more of a conifer forest, it’s kind of stuck at the birch/aspen forest.”

Although there are many reasons the birch forests are dying, almost all of them can be linked to the climate.

“Everything almost always boils down to climate change,” Thompson said.

Minnesota’s average temperature has risen 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1890s, according the Minnesota Climatology Working Group. This has led to dryer soils, more condensed rainstorms, and more dangerous fire conditions.

The latest Minnesota Department of Natural Resources report put over 80 percent of Minnesota in “extreme drought or severe drought” conditions. This last November was the warmest on record, and last October ranked in the top 10 warmest. All of these things are contributing to the birch and aspen dying out, and in their place growing scrub brush like alder, hazel and common tansy.

“All of these species do best with light,” said Mike Lynch, the Cook County Invasive Team coordinator. “With this added light they can really establish a thick mat and essentially choke off any other plants that are trying to get established in the area.”

Along with the invasion of non-native plants, the lower density of birch and aspen has opened up the landscape to an abundance of the whitetail deer, which are non-native to the North Shore. Because the deer feed on seedling conifers, the young trees hardly ever have the chance to grow to maturity.

“Essentially, what you have is a combination between an aging forest and a high deer population,” Lynch said. “So, you have a struggle for the plants to get started in general. There’s a feedback mechanism where the deer are consuming the conifers, but they don’t feed on the particular invasive species … so the conifers never grow and the invasive species becomes more abundant.”

A study by Mark White of The Nature Conservancy in 2011 examined the effects of whitetails on the ecosystem of northeastern Minnesota. It states–with almost overwhelming evidence–that “elevated white-tailed deer populations are a key factor in the large-scale restructuring of northern Great Lakes forests away from natural variability towards more homogeneous, novel forest conditions.”

Basically, White figured that the large number of deer was creating a monoculture that would eventually drastically alter the ecosystem.

The last 80 years of mismanagement have created a feedback mechanism that has perpetuated the growth of birch, aspen and scrub-land instead of conifers. Now that these forests are faced with a dying birch population and a rapidly changing climate, it is uncertain what the long-term growth of the North Shore will look like.

Now, cooperatives like the Sugarloaf Cove Stewardship Association are partnering with state and federal agencies to try to turn the tides in their favor.

This, in itself, presents a host of complications, though. With more than  70 percent of Lake Superior’s  north shore divided into private ownership, creating a large-scale management plan is difficult. Sugarloaf started its Lost Forest program eight years ago to help provide landowners with supplies and knowledge to manage their land.

Management is not always easy, though. Deer netting must protect each new conifer tree that is planted. This is an arduous process. Normally, an individual can plant upwards of 500 trees per day, but having to put up the netting enclosure limits most people to about 50 per day.

Bob Callery has owned his 40 acres in Cook County for the last 10 years. Although his property is farther from the lake than others, he sees many of the same problems.

“It’s pretty obvious that the birch are dying out,” he said. “There are a lot more dead trees. The birch forest is not as attractive as it used to be. I’ve been seeing it for almost 50 years; that’s a significant amount of time.”

Callery started planting trees on his property before he found out about the Sugarloaf Cove Stewardship Association. The classes taught him about ecosystems and forestry, and helped him understand how to manage his property.

“The Lost Forest project just gave me a lot better background on eventuating my property and giving insight into what I want to do with it in the future,” he said.

That future is uncertain. As the landscape morphs, its species will either have to adapt to its changes, or disappear.

Republished with permission of The Statesman.

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