Event title: Improving Restorations Webinar Series

Description: 

November 21, 12-1pm CST: Restoring oak savannas

Oak savannas are rare habitats that are easily degraded or lost due to invasive species, woody encroachment, and disrupted disturbance regimes. Learn how managers are overcoming these challenges and restoring oak savannas in the state. 

Michael Goodnature is the Natural Resources Manager for the Ramsey County parks system and has been in this position for over a decade. Mike’s work focuses on wildlife protection and the enhancement of over 6,000 acres of natural parkland. Mike has coordinated the restoration of hundreds of acres, including woodlands, prairies, and oak savanna.

Matthew McClanahan has been the Habitat and Wildlife Biologist for the Minnesota Valley Trust since 2020. He designs and implements habitat restoration and enhancement projects for lands acquired by the Trust, as well as on the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Wetland Management District in partnership with USFWS staff. He is often in the field leading and training their Conservation Corps Minnesota-Iowa crew.

December 5, 12-1pm CST: Soils and restoration

Soil – it’s not just dirt. From mycorrhizas to amendments for revegetation, this webinar will get you thinking about the importance of soils in your restorations.

Laura Aldrich-Wolfe is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Dakota State University. She is interested in the roles of mycorrhizas in natural and managed ecosystems. While she seeks to deepen our knowledge of the largely invisible world beneath our feet, she also hopes to inform decision-making about land use by policy-makers, ranchers and farmers.

Bora Cetin is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University. His research includes work on sustainable geotechnical practices. He is the principal investigator on a Minnesota Department of Transportation project to compare different soil prep methods for promoting vegetation establishment.

December 19, 12-1pm CST: Moving beyond reed canary grass

Dense reed canary grass can pose a difficult challenge for managers looking to restore wetlands and floodplain forests. In this webinar, learn about current research and management efforts that go beyond just herbicide treatments and incorporate ecological approaches to make progress toward long-term restoration. 

Andy Meier is a Lead Forester with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the St. Paul District, based out of La Crescent, MN. He leads forest rehabilitation and restoration on 23,000 acres of Corps-owned land within the Mississippi River floodplain and forest restoration contracts as part of the Upper Mississippi River Restoration and Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability programs. The main challenge facing floodplain forests in the Upper Mississippi is a near-universal absence of forest regeneration. One of Andy’s primary goals is to develop techniques to successfully implement natural and artificial regeneration in a dynamic floodplain in the presence of a range of aggressive herbaceous species, especially reed canary grass.

Kattia Paola Palacio Lopez is an assistant professor at the University of Houston-Downtown. Her research focuses on biodiversity and the role of abiotic factors driving both genetic and plastic variation in plant traits, spanning evolutionary and ecological scales. She explores the frontiers of an ecological and evolutionary understanding of mechanisms that influence plant adaptation to rapidly changing environments. She was the lead author of a recent paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology, "Suppression of reed canary grass by assisted succession: A sixteen-year restoration experiment."

Location: Online via Zoom

Organizers: University of Minnesota Extension

Contact information: cblanke@umn.edu

Register Here

CERPs/CERPITs: This event has been approved for 3 CEC(s). (one per webinar)