Fire History on the Leech Lake Reservation/Chippewa National Forest

Keywords: dendroecology, fire-climate relationships, red pine, annual tree growth
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change has been widely implicated as having an important role in the increase of wildfires due to lengthening of the fire season, and the emergence of more frequent, longer duration, more extreme drought events. Additionally, even with public land management practices having evolved considerably over the last several decades, past practices have led to persistent accumulations in fuels, partly responsible for the high-intensity, large-scale fires we are experiencing today. While substantial research efforts have contributed to the understanding of climate and fire in the United States, until recently, there has been little focus on fire in the upper midwest. In the upper midwest–more specifically, the Leech Lake Reservation and Chippewa National Forest located in northern Minnesota–fire has been an important cultural tool reflective of the rich history of indigenous people’s land-use practices, and where my research has been focused. Using tree-rings as a proxy, this research suggests that repeated fires have a significant effect on red pine tree-ring variability (annual growth variation of wide and narrow rings), which is a critical species used for understanding past climate in the upper midwest, and is perhaps biasing reconstructions of past climates. Knowing that past fire events include artifacts of indigenous land use, and those fires likely influence tree-ring variability in the same entity we use to understand climate in the upper midwest, poses a complex relationship between climate, fire, and people that will be addressed in this presentation.