Adaptive Forest Management

Adaptation in Action Webinar Series

Tuesday, April 18, Noon to 1:00 p.m.

It is crucial that we understand and prepare for impacts of climate change on forests in Minnesota and throughout the Great Lakes region. Looking to the future, managers will need to anticipate climate impacts in their region, and adapt their management strategies to reflect climate concerns to support healthy, ecologically-functioning forests. Jamie and Lucia will discuss adaptive forest management, including findings from research investigating management strategies, like the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change experiment in north-central Minnesota, tree species responses to climate change, and insights on adaptation plantings to help natural resource managers in the Lake States region identify best practices in adaptive planting and to prioritize areas for reforestation projects.

Event location

Webinar

Speakers

Lucia Fitts is a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Minnesota working on adaptation planting projects in the Great Lakes region that are focused on climate change or novel disturbance adaptation. She earned a Ph.D. in Natural Resources Science and Management with a minor in Geographic Information Sciences from the University of Minnesota. Her doctoral research focused on modeling land use change, biomass, and forest carbon dynamics in the United States as well as on the use and validation of landscape simulation models (LANDIS-II) with forest inventory data (US FIA). She earned a Forestry BSc. and a Forest engineering degree from Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina in Peru. While working in Peru, she focused her research in community forestry in the Amazon, where she studied the perceived impacts of timber and non-timber forest management in the Sinchi Roca I native community. Dr. Fitts also has an international and interdisciplinary background. She earned an Erasmus+ scholarship which took her to the University of Turku, Finland for 9 months. She has wide fieldwork experience in different parts of the world working with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

Jamie Mosel is a University of Minnesota Extension Educator for Climate Resilience with the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP), with a focus on forestry and natural resources. She has a B.A. in both biology and history from St. Olaf College, Masters in Forest Ecosystems and Society from Oregon State University, and a PhD in Natural Resources Science and Management from the University of Minnesota. Her PhD research was based at the Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change experiment in north-central Minnesota. She has also spent time in northern Japan at Hokkaido University with the Fulbright program both after undergrad and during her PhD, studying forests and climate change. Her past work has specialized in forest health, management, and tree physiology under climate change. Jamie is passionate about addressing climate change issues and supporting a healthy, sustainable, just, and ecologically sound future for all.

Adaptation in Action Webinar Series Image