Vegetation Change in the Big Woods of Minnesota

Investigators: Susy Ziegler and Julia Rauchfuss

We are monitoring vegetation change seasonally and over the past two hundred years in remnants of the Big Woods deciduous forest in southern Minnesota . The average canopy area disturbed during the twentieth century varied, but it averaged about 6 percent per decade. Peaks of disturbance in the 1910s and 20s were followed by recruitment of new maple trees that coincided with the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s. These observations have raised questions about connections between climate, fire, and fuel availability.