Browsing by Subject "Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Area Burn Map Series Annotated by Miron Heinselman
    (2014) Heinselman, Miron L.; United States Department of Agriculture; United States Forest Service
    The Area Burn Map Series is a set of United States Forest Service maps annotated by Miron "Bud" Heinselman. Information on the maps was obtained through years of personal field research. The maps were given to the University of Minnesota by the author in 1992. The maps were used by the author for his book, The Boundary Waters Wilderness Ecosystem (University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
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    Effects of Inland Lake Water Level Fluctuations on Ecosystem Services Due to Predicted Seasonal Precipitation Shifts
    (2015-10) Gearns, Timothy
    This research investigated potential changes to recreational and aesthetic ecosystem services in the BWCAW eco-region due to potential climate pattern changes over the next 100 years. The research looked at past literature regarding validation and definition of ecosystem service studies, the potential climate changes, and use of water level as an index to assess productivity in the littoral zone. This was accomplished by utilizing historical data available for a large boreal lake and simplified precipitation prediction techniques (two state Markov Chains and maximum likelihood gamma distributions) to create inputs to a model. The HEC-HMS modeled watershed produced outflows which were compared to a pre-prediction period state outflows to ascertain water level fluctuations, indicators of hydrologic alteration (IHA) and degree of impact to watershed ecosystem services. It became clear that despite a near inversion of base seasonal precipitation patterns and continued growth of total precipitation that snowpack and spring thaws controlled the lake water level response in the scenario researched and that overall behavior remained nearly consistent with little negative impact. The research indicates that if the scenario plays out, long term economic impact through recreation and aesthetic linked ecosystem services will remain stable. It is recommend that future research use more robust modeling software, spatially varying data sets and direct quantitative measurements of seasonal recreational use and value over several years.
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    Estimated Primary Forest Extents of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW)
    (2022-08-29) Johnson, Lane B; lbj@umn.edu; Johnson, Lane B; University of Minnesota Experimental Forests; University of Minnesota Dendroecology Laboratory
    This primary forest coverage was developed in 2014-2015 as an aid to tree-ring fire history investigations in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (Kipfmueller et al. 2021, Larson et al. 2021, Johnson and Kipfmueller 2016). The coverage is generally useful for research and stewardship of the forest communities within the BWCAW. The map is meant as a guide for presence/absence of primary forest and is not a substitute for on-the-ground assessments of forest age, composition, and structure. The coverage is still a work in progress and may be further refined with the help of coverage users. The coverage is best used to visualize primary forest extents and is not meant, at this time, to provide exact measures of remaining old-growth forest. Wildfires from 2015-2021 may have caused slight reductions in old-growth forest extents since this coverage was developed.
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    Logging History Maps Annotated by Miron Heinselman
    (2014) Heinselman, Miron L.; Trygg, J. W.; United States Department of Agriculture; United States Forest Service
    The Logging History Maps are maps annotated by Miron "Bud" Heinselman and J.W. "Bill" Trygg. The maps were given to the University of Minnesota by the author in 1992. The maps were used by the author for his book, The Boundary Waters Wilderness Ecosystem (University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
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    The North West Voyageurs Brigade Historic Trails Award
    (2003) Boy Scouts of America
    This short but interesting pdf describes an award given by the Boy Scouts of America to scouts accomplishing a route in the Voyageur's National Park. It contains a brief history and images of Native American and early European canoe routes. The pdf notes the importance of historic water routes to transportation and commerce.
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    Spatial patterns and succession in a Minnesota southern-boreal forest
    (1995) Frelich, Lee E; Reich, Peter B
    Succession was studied in a cold-temperate forest in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) of northeastern Minnesota. The 13 X 18 km study area comprises a complex forest mixture of jack (Pinus banksiana) and other pines, quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides), paper birch (Betula papyrifera), black spruce (Picea mariana), balsam fir (Abies balsamea), and white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) on thin soils over the Canadian Shield bedrock. The main objectives of this study were to examine the relationships betweenspatial patchiness, spatial scale, and canopy succession in the southern-boreal forest of the BWCAW, and to evaluate under what conditions successional direction may remain stable, converge, or diverge. Knowledge of the successional direction of old forests in the BWCAW that are undergoing demographic transition from evenaged to uneven-aged is important because the landscape now has many old stands as a result of reduced fire frequency. Rotation periods for fires have changed from -50-100 yr in presettlement times to >1000 yr since 1910. Analyses were conducted at spatial scales ranging from the individual tree (0.01 ha) to the large stand (16 ha). Two permanent mapped plots (of area 0.53 and 0.56 ha) were established in stands of different age. Finescale age structure, successional change, transition from one species to another, and development of small patches (of area <0.25 ha) were studied by means of stand history reconstruction with increment cores, spatial autocorrelation, and analysis of replacement trees in canopy openings. Spatial processes at nested scales of 1, 4, and 16 ha were examined on 15 square 16-ha tracts of upland forest, which are distributed among forests ranging from 15 to 190 yr old. Canopy species composition and patch development over time on these 15 tracts were interpreted on air photos taken in 1934, 1961, and 1991. Thus, the study includes a chronosequence approach, with verification of chronosequence validity by checking patch development processes at more than one time point. This checking was done at small spatial scales by reconstruction of stand history on permanent mapped plots, and at larger spatial scales with sequential air photos of the same locations spanning a 57-year period. Results show that the reduced fire frequency in recent years has changed the dominant successional pathways. When fire frequency was high, jack pine or aspen stands usually burned while still in the even-aged stage of development, and the new trees after the burn were the same species as before. Currently, many stands are undergoing demographic transition from even-aged stands of catastrophic fire origin to uneven-aged stands. This transition parallels a change in canopy composition from jack pine (occasionally red pine (Pinus resinosa)) or aspen to an old-growth multi-aged mixture of black spruce, balsam fir, paper birch, and white cedar. The mechanism that moves this successional path forward is canopy openings, 10-30 m across on average, caused by wind, insect, and disease, that gradually chip away at the relatively uniform canopy of pines and aspen. Successional direction is individualistic in the sense that time and rate of transition from pine/aspen to other species depends on the action of heavy windstorms, insect infestation, and senescence of old pines that create canopy openings. Canopy openings are often filled with one of several species, but if more than one species invades an opening, monodominant patches of each species generally result. Understory-overstory interactions are very weak; the dominant species within each patch is apparently independent of the overstory species that died when the opening was created or the species dominating surrounding patches. During succession, the spatial structure of the stands at the 1-16 ha scales generally changes from a matrix heavily dominated by pine or aspen to a mosaic with relatively large mono-dominant patches that may be remnants of the extensive original matrix, and finally to a mixture with small patches (mean area 35 M2, maximum -0.1 ha) of black spruce, balsam fir, white cedar, and paper birch. Thus, at 1-16 ha spatial scales, succession leads to convergence on a mixture of species. At smaller spatial scales (e.g., 0.01-0.1 ha) successional pathways appear to diverge into four community types. The same successional pathways can be reconstructed from historical analysis of individual stands as from a chronosequence of stands; therefore, chronosequences in this area have been stable at least during the lifetime of the current generation of trees.
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    Stand Origin Map Series Annotated by Miron Heinselman
    (2014) Heinselman, Miron L.; United States Geological Survey
    The Stand Origin Map Series is a set of United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographical maps annotated by Miron "Bud" Heinselman. Information on the maps was obtained through years of personal field research. The maps were given to the University of Minnesota by the author in 1992. The maps were used by the author for his book, The Boundary Waters Wilderness Ecosystem (University of Minnesota Press, 1996).