Browsing by Subject "land management"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Assessing Tall-Grass Prairie Quality for Restoration Management Planning at Lake Elmo Park Reserve
    (Resilient Communities Project (RCP), University of Minnesota, 2022) Allen, Bri
    Washington County is characterized by a distinct set of landscapes and natural resources, including rivers and streams, bluffs and ravines, lakes and wetlands, forests and grasslands, and prime farmland. The County has acquired nearly 4,500 acres of land to preserve these landscapes and resources for the public to enjoy. Developing goals and methods for responsibly managing and stewarding this public land is crucial. Currently, land management approaches fall along a spectrum that ranges from “active” management focused on eradication of undesirable non-native vegetation and restoration to historical land covers to “passive” management focused on managing the natural succession of the land and adapting the land to prepare for new environmental and climate conditions. Washington County staff desired a tool that could be used to assess the appropriate management approach for a given landscape to guide their management practices. A graduate student pursuing a Master of Professional Studies in Horticulture Degree worked with Washington County project leads Connor Schaeffer and Dan MacSwain as her capstone project to create a management guide for use with tall-grass prairie landscapes. The student’s final report and project poster are available.
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    County forestry activities: a survey of programs in selected states
    (University of Minnesota, 1980-04) Baughman, Melvin J.; Ellefson, Paul V.
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    Managing Invasive Buckthorn
    (University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, 2022-06) Bernhardt, Carolyn; Koop, Heather; Larkin, Daniel; Lee, Christine; Morey, Amy; Schuster, Mike; Venette, Rob; Wolf, Tiffany; Wragg, Peter; Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Plants and Pests Center, College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Science
    There are two types of invasive buckthorn in Minnesota: Common (European) buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus). Both species were introduced to Minnesota as ornamental plants and have now spread widely across the state. They outcompete native plants, suppress growth of canopy tree seedlings, and reduce habitat quality for wildlife. Both species are listed as restricted noxious weeds in Minnesota (https://www.mda.state.mn.us/plants-insects/minnesota-noxious-weed-list) and both are ranked high on the Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Plants and Pests Center’s (MITPPC) research priority list (https://mitppc.umn.edu/invasive-species-prioritization). Many landowners in Minnesota work to remove buckthorn from their property by hand-pulling, using removal tools, or treating with herbicide. But preventing buckthorn from coming back remains a challenge. Removing buckthorn increases the availability of key resources like light and nutrients that enhance plant growth. Unfortunately, these resources are often quickly used by new buckthorn plants arising from seed or resprouting from cut stumps. As a result, buckthorn is particularly good at re-invading an area, and often rapidly returns after removal. Meanwhile, native plants are often slow to return because their seed banks have been depleted by buckthorn dominance. In this toolkit: • Current and ongoing buckthorn management research at MITPPC that can help • How to identify glossy and common buckthorns • How to remove buckthorn • How to replant native vegetation to prevent future reinvasion
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    Nutrient loss from agricultural landscapes: A perspective from the stream
    (2023-06) Flynn, Kade
    Recently, optical sensors have been paired with mobile sampling platforms and deployed in headwater streams to investigate spatial patterns in stream water chemistry. These flow-path sampling platforms enable the collection of stream water chemistry at a high spatial resolution, allowing for direct measurement of the influence of specific landscape features. The capability of a packraft flow-path sampling platforms has been demonstrated in agricultural headwater streams, but the utility of collecting these data to inform on watershed processes and management has not been explored in depth. The motivation for this research was to understand the utility of measuring stream water quality at a high spatial resolution in headwater agricultural catchments by pairing data collected from the packraft sampling platform with traditional fixed-site water quality monitoring and high-resolution land attribute data to investigate controls on nitrate export.To compare packraft data with fixed-site monitoring, I analyzed concentration-discharge relationships on seasonal and event timescales and calculated the stability of spatial patterns along characteristic stream reaches within High Island Creek watershed, a tributary of the Minnesota River. By measuring the spatial stability of nitrate concentrations along three distinct stream reaches, I determined that low spatial stability coincides with chemodynamic concentration-discharge relationships and high spatial stability coincides with chemostatic concentration-discharge relationships. The added benefit of flow-path sampling is the ability to identify individual watershed features like wetlands and tributary channels that have important influence on stream nitrate concentrations. Analysis of data collected with this packraft sampling approach showed that small differences in the amount of landscape depressions and the rate of nitrogen fertilizer application were significant terms in statistical models explaining spatial variability in stream nitrate concentrations. These analyses demonstrate that there is value in collecting stream water quality data at high spatial resolution. This spatially intensive data provided a clearer understanding of the biogeochemical and landscape influences on stream nitrate in a midwestern watershed, and this measurement approach represents a promising tool for both understanding nutrient export in agricultural landscapes and the biogeochemistry of headwater streams in other environments.
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    A Resilience-Based Site Assessment Tool for Ecological Restoration Planning in Washington County
    (Resilient Communities Project (RCP), University of Minnesota, 2023) Petel, Ashley
    This project was completed as part of a partnership between Washington County and the University of Minnesota’s Resilient Communities Project (https://rcp.umn.edu/). The goal of this project was to explore the advantages and disadvantages of active land management and passive land management approaches. Washington County project leads Dan MacSwain and Connor Schaefer collaborated with a graduate student completing their Horticultural Science Master's Degree capstone project to build a resilience-based site assessment tool for common ecosystem types found in Washington County: upland prairie, oak savanna, deciduous forest, and palustrine wetland. A final student report, which includes the site-assessment tool, and a poster summarizing the project are available.