Lane Johnson

Fire regimes in North American forests are diverse and modern fire records are often too short to capture important patterns, trends, feedbacks, and drivers of variability. Tree‐ring fire scars provide valuable perspectives on fire regimes, including centuries‐long records of fire year, season, frequency, severity, and size. Here, we introduce the newly compiled North American tree‐ring fire‐scar network (NAFSN), which contains 2562 sites, >37,000 fire‐scarred trees, and covers large parts of North America. We investigate the NAFSN in terms of geography, sample depth, vegetation, topography, climate, and human land use. Fire scars are found in most ecoregions, from boreal forests in northern Alaska and Canada to subtropical forests in southern Florida and Mexico. The network includes 91 tree species, but is dominated by gymnosperms in the genus Pinus. Fire scars are found from sea level to >4000‐m elevation and across a range of topographic settings that vary by ecoregion. Mul...

This programmatic burn plan identifies resources and conditions necessary to bring prescribed fire (also known as planned or controlled fire) back the University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC). The primary objective for all prescribed burning operations is to reintroduce fire as an ecological and cultural process to promote and maintain historically fire-dependent forest communities. The plan contains twenty-one elements following the standard established in the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) Prescribed Fire Plan Template, PMS 484-1. Elements that are addressed include, but are not limited to, burn unit descriptions, prescriptions and objectives, safety hazards, resources needed for ignition, holding, and contingency, and a Go/No-go checklist for the day of burns. Seven burn units are identified across the CFC totaling 201.4 acres. The burn units range in size from 3.6-53.7 acres. Four units, totaling 75.2 acres, are identified as priority units and have site-specific information for prescribed fire implementation including maps. These units require minimal preparation to be ready for burning as of 2020; preparation primarily requires fire line establishment or refreshing where the unit perimeter is not already bounded by a road. Three additional units, totaling 126.2 acres, are identified as secondary units. These units require structural modification, primarily forest canopy density reduction through thinning, prior to being burned. This plan will serve as an umbrella document for the development of site-specific materials for these remaining units. For all units, appendices can be added, as necessary, with updated burn unit structure and fuel conditions.University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Cente

According to the University of Minnesota Real Estate Office the Allred Trust, the Boone Trust, the Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC), and the Hubachek Wilderness Research Center (HWRC) are properties across northeastern Minnesota owned by the University of Minnesota that are to be used for natural resources education and research and administered by the Coordinator at the CFC. These primarily forested properties cover a total of 4196.8 acres. This technical note summarizes property information found in the University of Minnesota Real Estate Office Inventory Report (2018) and defines these properties as the land base associated with the Experimental Forests collection in the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy.University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Center & University of Minnesota Hubachek Wilderness Research Cente

New dates from culturally modified red pine rediscovered in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota provide an opportunity to merge tree-ring records of human land use with archaeological records, historical travel accounts, and traditional knowledge to enhance understanding of Anishinaabeg land tenure in the Wilderness. Records from 244 culturally modified trees (CMTs) demonstrate varying intensities of human use along historical water routes, notably the Border Route that connected Grand Portage to Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods during the North American fur trade. Crossdated modification years from 119 CMTs provide direct evidence of human-landscape interaction along historical travel routes utilized by Anishinaabeg and Euro-American traders from the mid-1700s to the early 1900s. This CMT network preserves a fading biological record of fur-trade-era cultural history that contributes to a growing cross-cultural conversation on the storied traditional use ...

Tree-ring fire scars, tree ages, historical photographs, and historical surveys indicate that, for centuries, fire played different ecological roles across gradients of elevation, forest, and fire regimes in the Taos Valley Watersheds. Historical fire regimes collapsed across the three watersheds by 1899, leaving all sites without fire for at least 119 years. Historical photographs and quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) ages indicate that a high-severity fire historically burned at multiple high-elevation subalpine plots in today’s Village of Taos Ski Valley, with large high-severity patches (>640 ha). Low-severity, frequent (9–29-year median interval) surface fires burned on the south aspects in nearby lower elevation dry conifer forests in all watersheds. Fires were associated with drought during the fire year. Widespread fires commonly burned synchronously in multiple watersheds during more severe drought years, preceded by wet years, including fire in all three waters...