Impacts of the July 2016 windstorm on the UMN Cloquet Forestry Center forest

Abstract

A windstorm blew through northern Minnesota on July 21, 2016. Varying levels of impacts to forests were observed across the region. This report outlines the methods and results of a windstorm impacts assessment for the University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Center forest. Windstorm impacts were assessed on total of 246 continuous inventory plots and the traverses between plots for both monitoring reasons and to assess whether or not salvage logging operations were needed. Plot-based results showed that 86.6% of the forest had no impacts, 12.2% had low impacts, and 1.2% had high impacts. Traverse-based results, which were more sensitive, suggested that up to 34% of the forest may have had low impacts. Lowland forest cover types were slightly more likely to have been impacted than upland cover types. No salvage operations were deemed necessary based upon these results.