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- Kate HagstenLeech Lake Band of Ojibwe
- Melinda NevilleLeech Lake Tribal College
- Jack McGowan-StinskiThe Ohio State University
- Lake States Fire Science Consortium
Soils in the Leech Lake region are typically deep sandy loams, due to repeated Quaternary glacial deposition. These soils are often excessively drained, and support fire-dependent, conifer-dominated forest types. Blueberry plants have a high affinity for northern sand pine and dry-mesic mixed woodlands that are relatively dry and nutrient poor. However, blueberry abundance and production depend on disturbances that open the canopy to allow more light to penetrate the ground layer, and reduce competition with other species such as hazel. Historically this has been achieved with fire. The specific research question that we aim to answer was: how does prescribed burning change soil hydrology and infiltration with respect to blueberry production in the Sunken Lake area? To that end, we employed undergraduate students from LLTC to work collaboratively with both the Division of Resource Management for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, and the Northern Research Station. The interns assisted in environmental monitoring system (HOBO) maintenance, sensor data collection and analysis, fuel assessments, and soil analyses. While the fire plan was approved in June, the burn has not yet been conducted. At the three sites with HOBO sensor arrays, the baseline data has been collected since October 2018. We will present on the student training opportunities, initial data from the forest assessments and soil monitoring, and discuss what we expect to see post-burn.
Cataloging Information
- blueberry
- fire reintroduction
- fire tolerant species
- forest management
- fuels reduction
- Minnesota
- soil hydrology
- soils