A few days ago I was heading home after spending a few days at the cabin and the wildlife was very active on that particular day. I had to take a detour because of the road work on the highway going past our cabin. On the road between Hwy. 6 and Hwy. 38 I encountered three deer in different areas along the way. As I drove further south, I had two more deer cross the road in front of me. In the last two years, I have been seeing Sandhill cranes with more frequency. In 70+ years on this planet, I have never seen this species of cranes more than a couple of times. I passed an adult with two young ones in a ditch close to the two lane highway I was driving on. A little further down the road, I spotted a flock of turkeys in a field. Once I got on Interstate 35 and was heading south, I was driving past Pine City and, as I was approaching a bridge, there were five of those cranes, two adults and three young ones. The two adults were on the right side of the southbound lane facing me and were flapping their wings as if to challenge me, luckily there were no vehicles in the other lane, so I was able to change lanes and avoid hitting one or both of those birds. That was definitely a close call and an experience that I won’t soon forget.
Researchers experiment with climate change in a northern peatland.
About two years ago I read an interesting article in the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine. It seems that there is an area of land set aside East of Marcell, MN in the Chippewa National Forest.
"Welcome to a warmer future," reads the sign above the door to the strange translucent cylinder towering in the middle of a Minnesota peat bog.
Inside the 26-foot-high, open-roof chamber, dozens of high-tech instruments with names like dendrometer, phenology camera, and mini-rhizotron are collecting information on the plants, soil, water, and air within the 1,000-square-foot patch of damp bog. A warm breeze streams steadily from an air duct, and underground heaters radiate warmth into the soggy earth, keeping the chamber a toasty 16 degrees warmer than the surrounding forest peatland.
"Things have bloomed in here four to six weeks earlier. The blueberries were ripe three weeks before" berries outside the chamber, says Stephen Sebestyen, a hydrologist for the U.S. Forest Service who's giving visitors a tour. "I mean, look at this," he says, gesturing toward a small bog rosemary plant with swelling buds, ready to flower. "They're not doing that within the ambients"—by which he means unheated chambers—"or outside."
There are 10 chambers like this one nestled within the Marcell Experimental Forest, a 2,800-acre piece of the Chippewa National Forest north of Grand Rapids. They are part of a "whole ecosystem warming experiment" called SPRUCE—Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments.
The goal of the SPRUCE project is to help understand how climate change will affect Minnesota's vast stretches of northern forest peatlands—expansive wetlands that are home to millions of spruce and tamarack trees, dense carpets of moss, and a huge variety of birds and other wildlife.
The Marcell Experimental Forest was set aside by the federal government in the 1960s to perform long-term research on these peatlands and their surrounding watersheds. The SPRUCE project began more recently as a collaboration between the Forest Service and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. The chambers were completed in 2014 and the experiment became fully operational in summer of 2016.
The project has also brought some economic benefits to town. The chambers were built by a local contractor, and the project buys electricity and propane from local suppliers to heat the chambers. Visiting scientists also patronize Grand Rapids' hotels and restaurants.
All in all, north woods residents seem to be taking ownership of the experiment that has cropped up in their neck of the woods. "Minnesota should be very proud to have this experiment. It's going to inform our future generations about how climate is going to affect the planet," says Kolka. "And it's all in our back yard in northern Minnesota."
Much of the data collected from SPRUCE is sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. There, a team of scientists pores over it, hoping to stitch together the story of what is happening inside the chambers. But the SPRUCE project also draws many scientists from around the world to its doorstep in Minnesota. That's because the experiment is one of a kind. Discoveries made during the SPRUCE project may help us begin to understand what will become of northern forest peatlands across the globe as the planet heats up.
To read more about this experimental project, you can go to -https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mcvmagazine/issues/2018/jan-feb/spruce-project.html on the DNR website.
Until next time: I hope that you are able to get outdoors, visit a park or wet a line at a nearby lake, but mostly, just get out and enjoy our great Minnesota outdoors. If you are traveling, please be aware of the many types of wildlife that you may encounter.
Please take a few moments also to honor those who have sacrificed so much for the freedoms that we enjoy today. Also, take a little extra time to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice, those who have served and those troops that are serving today.